Supporting someone with a brain injury

So you walk into a room and someone has a brain injury. How can you help them? How can you support them? It may not be obvious, they might be able to walk and communicate. It might be they can't remember things. Might be they're having inappropriate behaviour. The best thing is to treat them as normal. They don't want to be treated as if they've got disability. Just talk to them as you would anybody else. Even if it's somebody who can't communicate back to you, talk to them as normal. The worst thing you can do is, does he take sugar? Ask them the question. Even if they can't respond, at least you're taking the time to give them the opportunity to answer that question.

If you want to find out more about brain injury, there are lots on Headway Sussex website and on Headway UK's website. On Headway UK's website, there's a shop with lots of publications that you can buy. They could be by people who've experienced a brain injury themselves, such as James Cracknell, who's written a book from his point of view. His wife, Bev, has written alternative chapters to James so we can understand how she felt as a family carer. There are academic books on the website, written by people such as Trevor Powell, who's a professor and a psychologist, and has an in-depth understanding of brain injury. So, if you're somebody who wants to know more about the science, looking at some of those books can be very useful.

The more we know about brain injury, the more we understand, the more we could help the individual with the brain injury. A lot of books written by people with an actual brain injury are easy to read, and it's not like having academia.