It was in the early eighties when the United States founded the National Head Injury Foundation. Prior to that, very little was available to deal with the rehabilitation needs of the head injured. The National Head Injury Foundation has put considerable emphasis on the problem and as a result, there are now some in-patient rehabilitation services that are appropriate for recovery after a head injury. More and more patients survive head injury now because of faster emergency services and because of the increased availability of scans and other technical devices that help control and monitor the condition of a patient after a head injury. New techniques have emerged such as cognitive rehabilitation and increasing numbers of specialists are getting involved with the recovery process of patients with a head injury.

Research no longer deals with, "if the brain recovers". Now it deals with, "how the brain recovers".

Yet, in spite of all these developments, there remains a serious shortage of quality facilities that specialize in the rehabilitation of this problem. In many countries, there simply is none. In fact, compared to all the other types of problems the CNR deals with, traumatic head injury has the least options available to help. Often the help available is poor. Very often it is stopped too soon and many families are face with coping, ill prepared to do so and without hope or direction for further rehabilitation opportunities.

The CNR started its work specializing in traumatic brain injury. In fact, we only saw traumatic brain injured children and adults in the middle sixties. In those days you could count on one hand the number of services in the world that even tried to help. The CNR is proud to be one of the first facilities in the world to provide specific rehabilitation services for the traumatically brain injured. Since we were one of the first, we are today one of the most experienced.

Some of the early staff of the CNR pioneered coma arousal programs. We were among the first to recognize the value of stimulation techniques and we were among the first to recognize that return to skilled function was indeed possible following brain injury.

Today, the CNR provides comprehensive programs of rehabilitation for the traumatic brain injured and specializes in helping families implement and administer their programs in the home. Our programs do not teach how to use appliances or how to modify your home to meet the needs of the patient. Others do that far better than we could even if we tried. We provide effective and appropriate stimulation programs aimed at improving the health and efficiency of the injured brain, the basic cause of the problem. When we succeed at doing so, the brain becomes better organized and has less need to display troublesome symptoms.

Generally, our programs for traumatic brain injury include a wide variety of sensory stimulation activities as well as specific repetitive movement exercises designed to reeducate healthy parts of the brain. We also concern ourselves with diet, nutrition, general health, breathing along with all the other specialty problems associated with traumatic brain injury such as joint problems, vision and hearing difficulties and inconsistency of performance which is perhaps the problem families find hardest to understand.

It is our belief that families can and will do an excellent job of meeting the rehabilitation needs of the traumatic brain injured loved one if they are given the information, support and encouragement they need. If your family member is recovering from traumatic brain injury and is being cared for in the home, you can do a lot to help. You must have some time each day, you must be able to work with the patient or arrange for others to do so and you must be able to get to one of our locations every three months. This allows us to conduct further evaluations and to up date the program being followed. If you are interested in giving your loved one this additional opportunity contact the CNR for further information. You may also be interested in the text under brain injury on this web page.

Send questions and/or comments to Dr. Unruh at DrUnruh@aol.com

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