Main description:

Many of the world's population have no access to appropriate diagnostic, neurorehabilitative or support services following brain injury. Addressing Brain Injury in Under-Resourced Settings: A Practical Guide to Community-Centred Approaches tackles this unacceptable gap in service provision by empowering the reader to provide basic care, education and support for patients with brain injuries and their families.

Written for an audience which does not necessarily have any prior knowledge of the brain, neurorehabilitation or brain injuries/pathologies, this practical guide first examines the global context of brain injury, considering the cross-cultural realities across communities worldwide. The book goes on to explore the reality of brain injury and how to work with its consequences, offering practical knowledge and advice in a user-friendly, richly illustrated format. It provides easily digestible information about the brain, including its normal functioning and the ways in which it can be damaged through injury and disease. The book also covers the basic skills needed to identify neurological difficulties and provides guidance on basic rehabilitation input and support. The final section of the book covers how to provide services, including working with organisations and communities, volunteering, initiating and developing community-based projects and programmes, and caring for patients and their families from emergency to recovery to rehabilitation.

This book is an invaluable resource for community health workers, voluntary sector workers and all professional healthcare providers who work with brain-injured patients around the world. It will also be important reading for policy developers, fundraising organisations and those who work with global humanitarian initiatives.

Contents:

Section 1: Under-resourced Settings: The Global Reality

1: Introduction: Brain Injury in the global context

2: Communities and cross-cultural realities

Section 2: Understanding Brain Injury and Working with its consequences

3: How the Brain works

4: The Injured Brain: Trauma and Diseases

5: How to recognise whether a patient is orientated

6: How to recognise and deal with memory problems

7: How to recognise and deal with language problems

8: How to recognise and deal with spatial cognition problems

9: How to recognise and deal with executive control problems

10: How to recognise and deal with mood problems, emotional dysregulation and other psychiatric presentations

11: How to recognise and deal with socio-emotional problems

12: How to recognise and deal with sleep problems

13: Understanding patients' medications and medical investigations

Section 3: How to Provide Services in Under-resourced Settings

14: Patients' Needs: The continuum of care

15: Emotional adjustment to brain injury: How to facilitate the process

16: How to educate and train community volunteers in the basic principles of neuropsychological rehabilitation

17: Transferable technology: Helpful tools

18: Working with NPO's/ NGOs, Charities and other Global Organisations

19: How to initiate and develop community-based projects and programmes

20: Community-based public health projects for preventing brain injury

21: Sustainability and Activism