1st October 2024
by Victoria Allen, Senior Assistant Psychologist What is mTBI? Mild Traumatic Brain Injury, often referred to as mTBI, might sound minor, but it can have serious implications. The American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine (ACRM) defines mTBI as a brain injury resulting from trauma that leads to loss of More…
13th November 2023
Written by Caitlin Thompson, Assistant Psychologist. The complexities of rehabilitation after an acquired brain injury (ABI) and major disability are vast and it is known that managing the new physical, emotional, and cognitive changes can impact existing and future relationships (O’Keefe et al, 2020; McCabe et al, 2023). However, for some brain injury survivors who More…
27th June 2023
Written by Caitlin Thompson, Assistant Psychologist. Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) and acquired brain injury (ABI) are two distinct conditions that affect individuals cognitive, social and emotional functioning in unique ways. However, a closer look reveals surprising (or to some clinicians, unsurprising) similarities in cognitive functioning. Exploring the common deficit of facial affect recognition in both More…
17th February 2021
Written by Olivia Fretwell In our last blog post, we discussed Functional Neurological Disorder (FND). This is defined by the NHS (2018) as a disorder of “medically unexplained symptoms”. Symptoms may be for example sensory loss, tremors, paralysis or even non-epileptic attacks/seizures. These are caused by the malfunctioning of the nervous system; the nervous system More…
24th December 2020
Written by Olivia Fretwell. There is an ever increasing body of research surrounding the link between playing contact sport and going on to develop Dementia and other neurodegenerative diseases later in life, especially in sports such as rugby, football and American football. After reading Steve Thompson’s moving interview in The Times, I wanted to find More…
30th July 2020
Written by Olivia Fretwell. In 2018, I wrote my A level Extended Project Qualification on prolonging life and the elderly. My key question was “where will it all end?” I considered several different perspectives on the extension of someone’s physical life as they aged, however this was leading to issues related to their cognition and More…
20th March 2020
By Oscar Johnson Personally, I have never found the idea of life changes very easy. I never wanted to start preschool, primary school, secondary school, sixth form or University. I always dreaded the thought of moving on. I enjoyed every stage of my life but could never seem to see that the next chapter would More…
26th February 2020
By Demi Perkins Positive Behaviour Support Positive behaviour support (PBS) is an evidence based approach which successfully reduces challenging behaviour. It aims to determine what, where, when, why and how challenging behaviour occurs. Often people present with challenging behaviour due to their needs not being met and their quality of life being low. PBS argues More…
6th February 2020
Are those with Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) at higher risk? Dr Simon Fleminger, Consultant Neuropsychologist, endorses the plethora of research that identifies a link between TBI and an increased risk of suicide. One well-respected study, conducted in Denmark, looked at hospital record data over a 34-year period. The study identified a total of 568,000 individuals More…
6th February 2020
Today is: “TIME TO TALK” day, Thursday 6th February, 2020. “Choose to talk about mental health and help change lives” Mental health issues affect 1 in 4 of us; yet, there is still an enormous stigma that can leave individuals feeling incredibly isolated and sometimes even embarrassed when talking about their problems. “Time to Talk” More…