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A simple definition of impulsivity after brain injury: Talking or acting without thinking. For a fun kind of explanation the cartoon above might help.  A reminder of the impact of acting without thinking. For more detail and suggested strategies read on.   What Is Impulsivity After Brain Injury? As the cartoon above demonstrates impulsive actions are those made without taking into account possible problems, and not thinking about possible consequences. While we can all be impulsive at times, impulsivity after brain injury is caused by damage to the brain, specifically the frontal lobe and it does not just go away. The mechanisms that control our ability to stop and consider, and to filter what we pay attention to, are damaged. It is important to remember the impulsive behaviour you see, is related to the damage to the brain [unordered_list style="green-dot"] it is not deliberate it may not be apparent to the person themselves it is unlikely to go away it can fluctuate,…

  Not being able to initiate activity and a change in levels of motivation after brain injury  can be a challenging and sometimes life limiting outcome to live with.   During a training session for community support workers I asked the group for the number one issue they struggled with, assisting a person living with brain injury. I had jumped ahead and assumed that number one would be either finding meaningful stuff to do, or challenging behaviour. Surprisingly, the number one issue was neither. It was the ethical dilemma of getting someone to do something they did not seem to want to do. Commonly termed lack of initiation and motivation after brain injury. How do you push someone to do something if they are not really willing to do it? How do you know when it is OK to push someone and when it is not OK? I use the word “push” here because this is how it can seem to a…

  Is it possible to have access to every available technique, gadget, app and technology for people with brain injury? I confess before we begin that I am being an opportunist here. I do love gadgets and technology. As part of the ever- increasing "Wow that's amazing" kind of stuff that is being developed I kept reading about different ways they were being used by, and for people with brain injury. So I have gathered links and resources rolled it up into this article. I do also have a strong view that we should be using all we have available to enable people to live a full meaningful life. For me, Wolf Wolfensberger says it all: Vastly more knowledge and technology exists about how to advance people toward their potential than is known by, or utilized in, any one service; therefore, no matter how good any service or agency is, there still may exist a better way (Wolf Wolfensberger quoted in Lemay…