Among a group of 45 severely head-injured clients in a post-acute rehabilitation programme, the clients' awareness of deficits and readiness to change are examined in relation to performance in treatment. Results lend qualified support to the hypothesis that head-injured clients who are aware of their deficits tend to have better treatment performance as rated by their therapists. Implications for measuring these constructs, matching treatment strategies to specific stages of change, and future investigation of the full application of these findings, are discussed.

The driving activities of 50 head-injury survivors were surveyed 6 months or more post-discharge. Of these, 21 (42%) possessed a valid drivers licence, but only 19 (38%) were actually operating motor vehicles at follow-up. Only measures of spatial/perceptual deficits were found to discriminate between groups of drivers and non-drivers. The recommendations of rehabilitation staff did not appear to have much influence on the final decision whether or not the survivor resumed driving activities. Most of the drivers did not report post-injury accidents or traffic violations, perhaps because several participants were restricting their driving activities. The willingness voluntarily to restrict driving behaviours may offer some head-injury survivors the opportunity to continue to enjoy this important daily living activity under selected circumstances.

This case history describes the successful use of a commercially available memory book by a brain injury survivor, including a description of the characteristics which made the book acceptable. Implications of the normalization principle for memory rehabilitation are also discussed.

No abstract

Two groups of head injury clients (oriented and non-oriented) and a group of non-disabled participants were compared on response consistency to a MMPI test. Over three testing sessions it was found that the non-oriented head injury group had the most inconsistent responses followed by the oriented head injury group and the control group. Though six of the 21 MMPI profiles from the non-oriented clients were identified as invalid, MMPI validity scales did not effectively detect unreliable responders. Results suggest that caution is needed when using self-report personal assessments with non-oriented head injury clients.