Cognitive Rehabilitation Therapy for Traumatic Brain Injury : A Guide for Speech-Language Pathologists

Cognitive Rehabilitation Therapy for Traumatic Brain Injury: A Guide for Speech-Language Pathologists is designed for speech-language pathologists (SLPs) treating adults with cognitive-communicative impairments following traumatic brain injury (TBI). TBI has received recent attention, due to an increase in the number of individuals with TBI, but also given concerns over long-term complications associated with TBI, such as concussion in sports. Cognitive impairments are one of the cardinal features of TBI, affecting communication and activities of daily living. Increasingly, SLPs are required to provide services to individuals with TBI. This book integrates scientific information into a user friendly and practical application tool as a starting point for practicing SLPs.Section I contains chapters that serve as background for understanding the treatment of individuals with TBI. Included are chapters addressing the nature of injury and recovery of TBI, and chapters on broader topics such as medical management and service delivery principles. An overview of cognitive-communicative impairments is also included, as are sections devoted to compounding conditions such as speech, language, voice, swallowing, hearing/balance, and emotional/behavioral issues. Section II contains chapters devoted to the treatment of TBI and cognitive-communicative impairments. Each chapter focuses on a treatment approach shown to have an established base of evidence to support its effective use. Chapters in Section II are formatted similarly, with an introduction to a treatment approach, followed by details and clinically useable information, such as recommended candidates, treatment procedures, ways to individualize the approach, and data collection techniques. Each chapter ends with a case study providing an example of treatment implementation. The associated PluralPlus companion website contains modifiable forms and materials for use in implementing the approaches (e.g., data collection sheets, stimuli lists, etc.), as well as video clips of treatment sessions using the approaches described in the book. The video clips are tied to actual case studies at the end of each treatment chapter.Cognitive Rehabilitation Therapy for Traumatic Brain Injury can serve as a supplemental textbook for graduate courses on neurologic communication disorders. It is also a valuable resource for students during clinical practicum with individuals with TBI (e.g., hospital internships or clinical hours). This book is also a professional resource that summarizes information in a way that is applicable to clinical practice for practicing SLPs. The presence of useable materials on the website, case studies with video clips, and sections with information like candidacy, data collection, and approach modification, all lend themselves to the use of this book as a professional resource.