Treating Families of Individuals with Traumatic Brain Injury

A traumatic brain injury may have a great impact on the family as a whole and may include changes in the family's organizational structure, communication patterns, or balance of family needs. In spite of this, treatment strategies for these problems are only slowly being recognized, resulting in either family reactions being inadequately addressed in rehabilitative programs, or treatment being approached from a family support perspective and not from a family therapy perspective. The aim of the following paper is to illustrate how family therapeutical approaches can be used in treating families of individuals with brain injury, in particular, structural interventions. Clinical examples will be presented where structural interventions were utilized with brain injury patients and their families. Other interventional approaches from family therapy will also be mentioned.