Below is a very simplified and general explanation. You may experience some or all of these things or your experience may be different. You are welcome to contact us to discuss what you are experiencing and what we can do to help.

Brain injuries can be traumatic or acquired. Traumatic brain injuries occur when something external hits the brain and damages it, such as a bump to the head in a car crash. Acquired brain injuries occur when something inside the brain causes damage, such as a stroke. When there is damage to our brains, Clinical Psychologists and Neuropsychologists can test various aspects of our functioning to look at the impact the brain injury has had on our abilities to do things.

Assessments usually focus on things like intelligence, memory, attention, executive function, attainment and so on. This is usually done by completing some neuropsychological tests. For children and young people, we don’t usually refer to “tests” in front of them and would often talk about completing some “games and puzzles” or similar.

The results of the tests allow the Clinical Psychologists and Neuropsychologists to make recommendations about how we can use the strengths in our functioning to help us with anything we find more difficult. For some of us it might be enough to understand our strengths and difficulties and the Psychologists recommendations and we can then go and put these into practice in our lives. For some of us it may be helpful to have some sessions with the Psychologist to focus on neurorehabilitation.