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Changing Family Needs After Brain Injury

Journal of Rehabilitation, Oct-Dec, 1998 by Peter Stebbins, Paul Leung

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Kreutzer et al.'s (1994) results demonstrated that many "Important" and "Met" needs reflect the hospitalization/medical or acute stage of rehabilitation (as is consistent with the mean onset of 15.9 months earlier). On the other hand, the needs identified by Maus-Clum and Ryan (1981) and Campbell (1988), such as honest accurate communication with health professionals, a chance to talk about feelings and emotions, information on brain injury, financial planning, and community resources (not ranked highly in the Kreutzer et al. (1994) study) may be needs that family members experience `beyond' the early years after brain injury.

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The current study investigated the changes in family needs over time using Kreutzer's FNQ. The finding that family burden and stress is greater at five years post-injury than at one year post-injury (Brooks, et al., 1986) leads to the hypothesis that increased burden and stress as time since injury progresses is related to changes in the nature and level of need. Specifically, the current study explored two aspects of family needs after brain injury.

(1) Changes in family needs as time since injury increases.

What needs do relatives caring for family members with brain injury beyond two years post-injury experience and do those needs differ in both importance and the degree to which they are met during the first two years post-injury? It was hypothesized that as time since injury progresses (beyond 2 years), needs ranked as "Important" would reflect long term care issues (help around the house, emotional support, community and financial resources, etc.).

(2) Changes in the level of unmet need as time since injury increases.

Do the need response patterns differ between families caring for a brain-injured relative during the first two years post-injury (Group 1) and families caring for an ABI relative beyond two years post-injury (Group 2)? Specifically, does the level of `not met' need increase as time since injury increases?

Method

Participants: The participants/respondents were 29 family members of 29 adult (18+ year old) relatives with an acquired brain injury. Family members included 9 mothers, 3 fathers, 10 wives (female partner), 2 husbands (male partner), 3 other male relatives (i.e. 2 brothers, 1 son), 2 other female relatives (i.e. 2 daughters).

Participants were recruited from Adult Day Activity Support Services, Community Access Services, Independent Living Skill Training Programs, and Family Support Groups where staff had contact with relatives of brain-injured individuals who were currently attending/involved in their agency/service. In each instance the participant was a family member who was a co-client of the agency/service (i.e. receiving counseling, support, training, etc.)

Key workers were asked to distribute the questionnaire only to those family members with whom they had direct contact. Also, key workers were requested to indicate that the research was independent of their agency and there would be no adverse consequences for participation or nonparticipation.

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Changing Family Needs After Brain Injury

Journal of Rehabilitation, Oct-Dec, 1998 by Peter Stebbins, Paul Leung

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