Addressing Brain Injury in Under-Resourced Settings

Ross Balchin is a Clinical Neuropsychologist based at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town, South Africa, and an Honorary Research Associate in the Division of Neurosurgery at the University of Cape Town. Dr Balchin also works with the Neuropsychoanalysis Foundation in New York as an independent contractor. He has formerly held both the National Research Foundation NPPD and the Claude Leon Foundation postdoctoral fellowships. Rudi Coetzer is a Consultant Neuropsychologist, and Head of the North Wales Brain Injury Service, Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board NHS Wales. He is an Honorary Senior Lecturer in Clinical Neuropsychology in the School of Psychology, Bangor University. Dr Coetzer is on the British Psychological Society Division of Neuropsychology Specialist Register. Christian Salas is a Clinical Neuropsychologist and a Psychoanalytic Psychotherapist. He is a researcher at the Cognitive and Social Neuroscience Laboratory (Universidad Diego Portales) and Training Teacher at the Dynamic Psychotherapy Unit (J.H. Barak Psychiatric Institute), both in Santiago, Chile. Jan Webster is an independent organization development consultant in the international charity sector. She founded The ComaCARE Trust in 2005 at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town and served as its director for ten years, during which time she started its HeadsUP! community brain injury rehabilitation programme. She has successfully promoted public brain awareness through cofounding an official World Design Capital 2014 project entitled Brainstorm the City. In 2007, Jan became an Ashoka Fellow in recognition of her social entrepreneurship.

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