TBI Treatment and Rehabilitation

It is vital that a TBI survivor receives an individualized rehabilitation program focused on the person’s individual strengths and capabilities. Along with a team of specialized health professionals, a TBI survivor and his or her family can work together to achieve the highest level of independent living at home and in society.

It is also very important that rehabilitation change over time to adapt to the survivor’s changing needs and continuing healing. This is often a long process. Retraining the brain and body to function and perform even the most mundane tasks can take years. Recovery of a brain injury takes time, patience and perseverance.

The Multidisciplinary Team

Most rehabilitation centers have begun to favor a multidisciplinary team approach to brain injury rehabilitation. This includes specialists from physiatry, psychiatry, neurology, psychology, neuropsychology, occupational therapy, physical therapy, speech therapy, and cognitive therapy.

• Physiatrist: Physicians who specialize in physical medicine and rehabilitation are called physiatrists. Physiatrists are generally the primary treating physicians for head-injured patients and direct the comprehensive rehabilitation team of professionals .
• Neurologist: Neurologists specialize in illnesses that affect the brain, spinal cord, peripheral nerves, and muscles, including posttraumatic seizures, pain and headaches, cognitive disorders, personality changes, and disturbances of motor function.
• Psychiatrist: Psychiatrists are medical doctors who diagnose and prescribe medications and psychotherapy for posttraumatic head-injured patients suffering emotional problems like depression, anger, mood fluctuations, and mania.
• Psychologist: Psychologists are not medical doctors. They confine their treatment of posttraumatic emotional problems to psychotherapy (“talk therapy”). While they may advise the use of specific medications, they cannot prescribe them.
• Neuropsychologist: A neuropsychologist is a psychologist with additional specialized training in psychological testing. Most have a PhD in psychology with additional years of post-doctoral training in clinical neuropsychology. Their graduate education emphasizes brain anatomy, brain function, and brain injury or disease and their testing helps diagnose and assess patients with a variety of medical conditions that impact intellectual, cognitive, or behavioral functioning. They can administer and interpret certain types of standardized tests that can detect effects of brain dysfunction.
• Cognitive Therapist: Cognitive therapists help brain-injured patients develop new strategies for remembering and exercising higher intellectual tasks.
• Occupational Therapist: Occupational therapists help patients recover fine dexterity when manipulative skills have diminished, such as figuring out how to button clothes, use utensils, and count currency.
• Physical Therapist: Physical therapists work with patients to improve motor skills like walking, climbing stairs, reaching, and lifting.
• Speech Therapist: Speech therapy following a brain injury usually addresses a variety of issues including speech quality, and understanding and expressing the spoken and written word.
• Life Care Planner: Life care planners are professionals who work with the health care team to provide a life care plan. A life care plan is a dynamic document based upon published standards of practice, comprehensive assessment, data analysis and research, which provides an organized, concise plan for current and future needs, with associated costs, for individuals who have experienced catastrophic injury or have chronic care needs.

Coping

When someone survives a traumatic brain injury, there may be changes that impact an individual’s life as well as their family, friends and community. These changes include physical (muscle coordination problems, full or partial paralysis, changes in senses), cognitive (memory problems, difficulty communicating, poor judgment) and behavioral changes (depression, irritability, difficulty with social skills). Coping with these changes requires patience and time.

Just as a person who is injured is changed, all others who care about the injured individual are impacted in a variety of ways. In order to cope with these inevitable changes, everyone affected by the injury must get through it in an emotionally and physically healthy manner.

Brain injury is a major public health problem worldwide, so you know you are not alone when it comes to coping with this type of injury. There are a great amount of resources available to the TBI survivor and their loved ones. It is incredibly important to become informed about the particular TBI and also as important to educate others about it.

Brain Injury Association: The Unvarnished Truth – There Is No Cure For Brain Injury

If you suffered a brain injury, contact the TBI attorneys at Wisner Baum Aristei & Goldman to learn about your legal options. Call (855) 948-5098 today.