Living with brain injury

Mental Health Nursing,  Mar 2003  by Barrett, Paul

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By Philip Fairclough, published by Jessica Kingsley, 2002, ISBN 1-84310-059-2

176 pages

L9.95

This is a personal travelogue through rehabilitation following severe head injury. Fairclough maintains a practical, matter-of-fact and analytical tone - recording the events of his rehabilitation, identifying his own emotions and choices available at certain stages. He has a clear mission to de-mystify traumatic brain injury, (TBI - closed head trauma resulting in extensive diffuse damage to the brain), which brings difficult daily living consequences widely varying from person to person.

Fairclough's clarity and directness serve well in adding to his authority as an 'insider' of this extremely challenging injury. The ideal readership for this book will be family and close friends of a TBI person, TBI people themselves at a stage post-injury when they feel able to absorb and accept it, and rehabilitation professionals who will benefit from a closer understanding of an insider's perspective.

He frequently touches on psychological changes brought by TBI (largely the book's main theme, after all), but devotes an inadequate and disappointingly generalising three pages to 'Handling the psychological changes'. The book is a good touchstone of post-TBI life, offering a light but earnest personal account - it is reassuring but neglectful of contributions from formal psychology, neuropsychology or counselling since he did not experience them.

Copyright Community Psychiatric Nurses Association Mar 2003
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