There is increasing evidence that identification with social groups can protect and enhance health, establishing a kind of ‘social cure’. However, for those affected by chronic or disabling conditions such as acquired brain injury (ABI), their identity may also represent a burden, a form of ‘social curse’. The present study explored the identity benefits and burdens available to 15 participants living with ABI using semi‐structured interviews. The qualitative data was then analysed systematically using thematic analysis. The findings highlight social identity changes as central to the experience of brain injury. Participants reported changes in their social networks and social group memberships after injury. Identity loss and reduced social support were described as disabling. Engagement in meaningful group activity with others affected by ABI and access to affected peers enabled new group‐based resources such as social support. In this way, group activity can be seen as a form of identity enactment that can drive social cure effects. Similarly, adaptation to life after injury was demonstrably linked to social identity processes pointing to the importance of a social cure approach to rehabilitation.

Primary objective. This paper reports on the personal experiences of loneliness for individuals living with brain injury.Research design. This is a qualitative research design, employing semi-structured interviews and subsequent contextualist thematic analysis.Methods and procedures. Eleven clients (two female and nine male, aged between 27 and 63 years) with brain injury participated in semi-structured interviews. Thematic analysis was employed in the interpretation of the data.Main outcomes and results. The interview data and subsequent analysis depicted three overarching themes in a healing process -'Internal Loneliness', 'Healing the Cracks', and 'Visible with Cracks'. Participants described five factors which contribute to their feeling of loneliness: trauma, social isolation, concealment, rejection of part of self, and invisibility of their disability. The participants' accounts also detailed the necessity of a therapeutic intervention and relationship to deal with and address some of these issues.Conclusions. This study highlights that processing the trauma, developing dialectical thinking, self-compassion, and a degree of self-acceptance assist in the movement of participants towards allowing themselves to be 'Visible with Cracks'. This allowance of self to be fully seen appears to serve an important function for reconnection with self and others. These results may help to inform brain injury rehabilitative care, through developing their understanding of the internal loneliness factors that may be influencing an individual's social isolation or social withdrawal. Statement of contributionWhat is already known on this subject?Individuals with brain injury continue to report significant problems developing social contacts and maintaining significant relationships years post-injury. Social needs often outweigh the physical and cognitive needs in ranking of importance by both individuals with brain injury themselves and their families.

The profession of clinical psychology is predominantly populated by women, yet women are significantly underrepresented in the higher levels of the profession. The aim of this study was to explore the perceptions and experiences of gender difference and implicit bias within the profession of clinical psychology. Through 16 semistructured interviews with psychologists at four different trajectories of their clinical psychology career (10 assistant psychologists, 2 clinical trainees, 3 qualified clinicians, and 1 principal (management grade) clinical psychologist), participants explored their perceptions and experiences with gender discrimination, stereotyping, and implicit discrimination within their roles. An interpretative phenomenological analytic (IPA) approach was employed and superordinate and subordinate themes were derived from the interview data. The superordinate themes included: “Priming a manager—think male,” “Sideways Sexism,” and “Glass Ceiling or Sticky Floor?.” Participants’ experiences were described by a number of issues relating to primed and assumed leadership, societal expectations and pressures, how women relate to other women, the experience of a different kind of scrutiny, and sacrifice and compromise. In order to challenge gender inequality in clinical psychology, it would be helpful for gender bias to be increasingly spoken about and acknowledged explicitly. Furthermore, the idea that an effective psychology manager should exert masculine qualities needs to be challenged.

BACKGROUND: Stress is common to the experience of TBI. Stressors challenge physical and psychological coping abilities and undermine wellbeing. Brain injury constitutes a specific chronic stressor. An issue that hinders the usefulness of a stressbased approach to brain injury is a lack of semantic clarity attaching to the term stress. A more precise conceptualisation of stress that embraces experienced uncertainty is allostasis. OBJECTIVE: An emerging body of research, collectively identifiable as 'the social cure' literature, shows that the groups that people belong to can promote adjustment, coping, and well-being amongst individuals confronted with injuries, illnesses, traumas, and stressors. The idea is deceptively simple, yet extraordinarily useful: the sense of self that individuals derive from belonging to social groups plays a key role in determining health and well-being. The objective of this research was to apply a social cure perspective to a consideration of an individual's lived experience of TBI. METHODS: In a novel application of interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) this research has investigated one person's lived experience in a single case study of traumatic brain injury. RESULTS: Paradox, shifting perspectives and self under stress, linked by uncertainty, were the themes identified. CONCLUSIONS: A relational approach must be key to TBI rehabilitation.