Enhancing treatment effectiveness for psychosocial disorders after severe traumatic brain injury

机动车事故是严重创伤性脑损伤(TBI)的主要原因，导致终身残疾。仅在新南威尔士州，每年就有大约770例新的严重脑损伤病例。这些人需要广泛的住院康复，许多人在余生中继续依赖社区资源。这种伤害的社会和经济代价是累积的。创伤性脑损伤主要由具有正常预期寿命的年轻人(18-24岁)经历，这种社会负担每年都会增加更多的伤亡。患有脑外伤的成年人经常会经历社交技能的下降。丧失社交技能是重新融入社区的主要障碍，因为这会使患者在社会交往中负担更重，回报更少。这种社交技能的丧失限制了他们维持受伤前关系的能力，并经常给潜在的新熟人留下令人不快的第一印象，干扰他们建立新关系的能力。下面的项目旨在开发和评估一项治疗计划，以提高TBI个人在与新相识的人--例如，潜在的雇主、同事、客户和社交熟人--见面时创造良好第一印象的能力，并从事互惠互利的行为。该项目将为当前补救的理论方法提供信息，提供对社会技能缺陷的可修复性的检查，这些缺陷是潜在的认知障碍的结果。它将为目前为数不多的个人和群体提供系统、综合的社交技能治疗方法。识别和改进成功的治疗技术将提高澳大利亚脑损伤康复的效率，改善脑外伤患者及其家人的生活质量，降低康复成本，并从长远来看减少对社区资源的依赖。

Motor vehicle accidents are a major cause of severe traumatic brain injury (TBI) leading to lifelong, crippling disability. In NSW alone, there are approximately 770 new cases of severe brain injury each year. These people require extensive inpatient rehabilitation and many go on to rely upon community resources for the rest of their lives. The social and economic cost of such injury is cumulative. TBI is mainly experienced by young adults (18-24 years of age) who have normal life expectancy and each year more casualties are added to this social burden. Adults with TBI frequently experience a reduction in social skills. Loss of social skills presents major obstacles to reintegration into the community by making the sufferer more taxing and less rewarding to interact with socially. This loss of social skills limits their ability to maintain pre-injury relationships, and often creates an off-putting first impression on potential new acquaintances that interferes with their ability to establish new relationships. The following project is designed to develop and evaluate a treatment program to enhance the TBI individual's ability to create a good first impression on meeting new acquaintances - e.g., potential employers, work colleagues, customers, and social acquaintances - and to engage in behaviour that is mutually rewarding. The project will inform current theoretical approaches to remediation, providing an examination of the modifiability of social skills deficits that are the result of underlying cognitive impairments. It will provide a systematic, integrated social skills treatment approach for both individuals and groups where there are currently very few. The identification and refinement of successful treatment techniques will increase the efficiency of brain injury rehabilitation in Australia, improve the quality of life for sufferers of TBI and their families, reduce cost of rehabilitation and reduce reliance upon community resources in the long term.