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Product Description
Behavioral changes arising from neurological disorders often contribute to problems for the patient, the family, and service providers. This comprehensive, thoughtful, ethical, and useful treatment manual clearly describes effective interdisciplinary interventions for managing specific problem behaviors related to loss of self-control, physical impairment, mood or thought disorders, and cognitive impairments. In their how-to handbook, authors Brigitte K. Matthies, Ph.D., Jeffrey S. Kreutzer, Ph.D., and, created more than just a text on treating a wide range of troublesome behaviors that are common after acute neurological insult-including aggression, perseveration, and disinhibition. The authors also caution against the reader's tendency to erroneously interpret that managing behavior problems is merely the rigid application of a few simple rules that result in the behavior problems going away magically. Matthies, Jeffrey, and West show that behavior problems are a result of (1) a complex, changing, and evolving interaction between the patient's pre-morbid habitual ways of behaving and coping; (2) the nature, location(s) and severity of brain injury; (3) the resulting cognitive, physical, and emotional problems; and (4) the ways in which the environment-particularly the people in the environment-responds to the patient. The authors' aim is a thorough understanding of why the behavior appears and continues. The approach demands detailed analysis of the environment, a detailed specification of the problem behavior(s), a detailed and quantifiable treatment plan, and meticulous observational data and associated records. Illustrated by numerous case examples, this 152-page handbook takes a practical, down-to-earth approach, providing general principles of effective management, specific techniques that work well with patients who have neurological dysfunction, and common treatment goals.
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