090612 Webinar Transcript– VR IMPLICATIONS OF WORKING WITH THE FAMILY OF INDIVIDUALS WITH TBI
VR IMPLICATIONS OF WORKING WITH THE FAMILY OF INDIVIDUALS WITH TBI
September 6, 2012
ROUGH EDITED COPY
REMOTE CART PROVIDED BY:
ALTERNATIVE COMMUNICATION SERVICES, LLC
PO BOX 278
LOMBARD, IL 60148
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This is being provided in a rough draft format. Remote Communication Access Realtime Translation (CART) is provided in order to facilitate communication accessibility and may not be a totally verbatim record of the proceedings.
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Good afternoon and welcome to the southeast TACE webinar, traumatic brain injury, complications for individuals with TBI.
This is the fourth and final webinar in our TBI webinar series.
If you attended the other webinars please give me a quick hand
You can find the hand in the participant window in the lower left hand corner.
For those who have not attended the total series it's available on the TACE website in the archive and I will put the link up in the window.
And welcome to the southeast TACE webinar, this is a final audio check to make sure all of our participants have audio.
Please give me a green checkmark and just as a reminder, if you have any questions, either for the present er or technical in nature you can type them in the chat room and we will do our best to get the question to the presenter
Captioning is available and this seminar will be archived to share with your colleagues.
Good afternoon and whole come to the 2012 southeast TACE webinar, traumatic brain injury implications for individuals with TBI.
This webinar is the final in a four part series on improving employment out comes for individuals with TBI.
The series was developed in partnership with the South Carolina state University and the TACE network on improving services to individuals with the most significant disabilities.
My name is Cindy Smith, I'm the administrative assistant and we do rehabilitations and enhance employment outcomes for people with disabilities in all states.
We are with the ADA center and TACE and the southeast ADA center are managed by the Burton Blatt institute.
We are hosting quite a few webinars this year, if you are signed up, great, if not visit our website at TACE southeast.org to see what we are offering this year.
I want to share some information and answer some of the frequently answered questions we received about the webinars.
Today's webinar is being conducted using blackboard collaborative, it's a web conferencing system that is fully acceptable to everyone regard less of their disability and/or assistive technology that might be used.
The system makes it possible for us to conduct workshops over the Internet from just about any computer with an Internet connection and web browser.
There are many computer issues that are beyond our control
But there are a few things that you can do to enhance your experience.
It's really important that you check your system prior to the session.
We are unable to trouble shoot technical issues right before the webinar is scheduled to begin.
This session is being captioned.
To turn on the captioning, please select the CC icon in the upper tool bar to open a separate window with captioning
The session is also being recorded and archiving for future use.
You will be sent a link to the archive after the session
Please share this freely with your colleagues who may have missed the opportunity to participate in today's session.
At this time we are advising you to close all other applications you may have running on your computer because they may interfere with your successful experience today.
If you are connected to a network do not forget to tap the space bar every once in a while to let the system know you are still there.
And lastly participants may submit questions at any point during the webinar by typing them into the chat area
Questions will be addressed at appropriate times throughout the session and during an open forum at the end of today's presentation.
It's entitled traumatic brain injury, implications for the family of individuals with TBI.
And we are privileged to be joined by our feature presenters Dr. Bridget statin and Dr. Antoinette Hollis.
She has 12 years of experience working with individuals with disabilities and currently an associate professor at South Carolina state University and her research focuses on learning disabilities and intellectual development disabilities and accommodations, minority issues in counseling and employment out comes of persons with disabilities
She is also a certified rehabilitation Counselor and Board certified professional Counselor.
Dr. Hollis has worked in the field of rehabilitation counseling with consumers with dual diagnosis of mental health disorders and substance abuse disorders and she is currently an assistant professor at clerk Atlanta University and her research focuses on anger, aggression and violence in United States and youth and she is a professional Counselor national ly certified Counselor and Board certified professional Counselor.
I will now turn today's session over to our speakers.
> Hello every one and good afternoon.
> Good afternoon
> I want to start with the objectives of the presentation so that you can get a feel of what we're going to present and kind of construct your questions according ly.
The objective that Antoinette and I will cover will look at the TBI population, give you a little bit of statistics about the population, the prevalence, identify potential impacts on that family dynamics, look at the recovery process, not just for the individual with the TBI but we will also look at the recovery process for the family.
We will address issues with the treatment team, we will look at their responsibility in the recovery process.
Antoinette will address behavioral management strategies, some coping strategies to assist family members, caretakers, and also we will identify important factors that influence the rehab process
When you look at a basic definition of TBI, the traumatic brain injury is defined as a blow or jolt to the head or penetrating head injury that disrupts the function of the brain.
The definition includes all TBI and it's very broad in scope.
But as you know injuries can vary from mild, moderate to severe.
Depending on the type of TBI.
And a long with the severity you will see short, long term problems in functioning.
You all know that empathy is an important aspect of counseling and especially working with an assisting individuals with disabilities.
In general, but this statement is a quote from the individual with TBI who really wants their Counselors or, you know, caretakers and every one around them to understand what it feels like to live with TBI so I will read the quote and just think about this, it says imagine waking up each day with a pounding headache, always feeling like you have a hangover, plus a bad flu, after being up three nights in a row, having trouble concentrating, remembering, and getting your thoughts together.
Losing your temper, and snapping at people for no reason.
On top of that, no one believes you and they think you're crazy.
This is a pretty profound quote and it gives you a window into what TBI looks and feels like.
TBI population.
Just looking at some of the statistics that research has been done with the C.D.C., you can see that each year is estimated that 1.7 million individuals sustain a TBI
When we look further into the out come of those 1.7 million individuals, we see that 52000 die each year from complications related to the TBI, 275,000 are hospitalized and close to 80% have very mild forms of TBI and those can be treated and usually released from the hospital
Your more moderate and severe cases of TBI fall into less than 15% of the TBI population it's hard to believe that at least three people sustain a TBI every minute, but these stats from the C.D.C., and that is the C.D.C. is the group that actually looks at statistics when it comes to different health issues and things of that sort, it includes civilians and military as well.
These are 20,000 2010 stats and we know the numbers have increased in 2012.
TBI population continued.
30.5% of all injury related deaths are TBI
And 75% of TBIs are usually mild concussions as we stated in the previous slide.
These types of mild TBI can be treated and are usually released.
But when we look at the magnitude of TBI, costs for medical care, rehabilitation and lots of work, it costs approximately $76.5 billion which is quite a bit of money
TBI population, we are still looking at the population here, as we look at the TBI population we see higher rates for males than females with TBI.
I'm sure this is because the C.D.C. including civilians and service members and Veterans and other individuals in their numbers.
Active duty military and service members have a higher risk of sustaining a TBI doing during peace and war.
And usually the last are the leading cause of TBI for active duty military individuals.
Now we want to look at the affects of physical and cognitive affects on the individuals with TBI.
Now that we have a clear picture of the over all population's prevalence, let's look at the affects of TBI on the individual.
When we look at physical changes, you may see some of the following: You will see headaches, you will hear headaches, difficulty speaking, trouble hearing, loss of energy, possible dizziness or trouble with balance
And understanding that a diagnosis of TBI does not mean the same for every individual and although characteristics, those physical and cognitive may be similar, it's important not to see each case as the same individual with a TBI.
In other words, they could be experiencing some of these symptoms, all of these symptoms or just a few
Some of the cognitive changes include: Difficulty concentrating, maybe some trouble with attention span, forgetful ness, and repeating different things.
Here are some other emotional and social affects on persons with TBI.
Emotional changes can include irritability, getting frustrated easily, acting without thinking, and some of your social and behavioral changes are getting frustrated and acting without thinking as well.
So we want to be cognisant of these types of emotions and the affects after one hasn't cured a TBI.
These are some of the symptoms that you may see or some of the things that they may express.
Effects of TBI.
These are some additional ones, I think we have covered some of these but looking at concentration, attention span, memory setbacks, is common, sleep dysfunctions, anxiety.
As you know depression is a big issue, irritability.
Persons with TBI sometimes experience anxiety related symptoms, apprehension, this is a very uncertain time, a lot of interpersonal sensitivity and definitely social alienation.
Now that we understand about TBI, we know the prevalence, we understand some of the symptoms and the effects that may be contribute and that are exhibited by these individuals, we understand the road to recovery, what actually happens now that an individual has an acquired a TBI.
The road to recovery needs to be fully understood by the family as well as the individual with the TBI
I like to call it a two lane back road.
It takes the slower pace than a two lane highway.
And I say that because with the two lanes, one of the lanes, includes the individual with the TBI and the other lane is the family
We want them traveling together in the same direction.
It's important to know that the family shares the TBI as well and may also have to go through a recovery process.
Through the recovery process, the family can be very helpful or they can be potent fly harmful without knowing it.
As Counselors we should understand the critical role the family plays in the recovery process.
Road to recovery continued.
It's very important to help families to understand that although their desire is to get back to normal or what one may see as normal they may have to create a new normal
This process is likened to the grieving process and which you see the individual as totally different from what you were used to seeing and everything in that family's world has been turned up side down.
However, as you know, grieving is a process and it takes time to transition into the reality of the situation
As the family becomes more realistic in its expectations for the individual with TBI, they will begin to increase positive out comes
This is a process.
Recovery stages.
Now, this is really important to understand because when you look at the different stages of the recovery process, this is what we see, different responses and out comes.
So let's look at the recovery stages so we will understand what the consumer is really experiencing as we work with them.
These stages can be experienced by both the individual and the family.
Or caretakers.
When you look at trust versus doubt, they both go through stages of acceptance of the TBI, bouncing back and forth from trusting those around them if it's doctors, Counselors or family and doubting the reality of what they see and hear.
The intended out come is for full trust and the concept of recovery.
And the hopefulness is they accept the reality of the situation and that can take time.
Another part of a stage or the recovery process is hope versus shame.
As they experience symptoms of the TBI, they can also experience shame