This presentation offers participants a first-person perspective when working with your patients as you prepare them for discharge from a brain injury rehabilitation program. Chris and Amy will share how they applied, generalized, and modified some key therapeutic exercises and strategies that helped Chris manage daily living challenges after his therapy ended in 2001. They will also offer some practical  tools and strategies they created themselves , that were essential in helping him move forward in his personal recovery; and their lives together as a couple.
Chris and Amy will also offer key points in how your role as therapist can help motivate patients drive to improve, increase a sense of hopefulness, and instill a belief that life after brain injury is still meaningful and purposeful.
Chris and Amy provide rare insight into what is possible in the recovery process years after a patient is discharged from rehab. 

2. Managing Life as a Couple Living with Brain Injury

This interactive workshop will focus on the challenges couples face living with brain injury.  Adapting to role and behavior changes, resolving communication challenges, and creating realistic expectations between the couple will be discussed.  Approaches toward dealing with family members who might not fully understand the unique challenges of living with brain injury will also be addressed. Chris and Amy will share their personal insight on how they renewed their relationship and re-defined their life path as a couple. 

3. “We   Are  FAM- I - LY   …  Finding Common Ground after brain injury”

This discussion group will focus on brain injury survivors and family members who are struggling with the challenges of living with brain injury. Practical Strategies will be discussed that help survivor and family members develop a personalized plan when participating in family functions and daily events.

4. Rehab Is Over… Now What!

Has your rehab therapy program come to an end? Have you been discharged from the hospital without receiving any therapy?  During this session Chris, a brain injury survivor since 1999, and his wife Amy will share some of the creative exercises and tasks they created that helped him make significant improvement over the past several years. You will also have the opportunity to share strategies that have helped in your own recovery journey.

5. Inside the Recovery Journey of Brain Injury

This presentation will provide participants with a first-hand perspective about living with brain injury that will help students in the Allied Health Sciences, Psychology, Counseling, and Special / General Education related fields of study provide appropriate support when working with survivors and family members in the brain injury population.  Professors, College counselors and Deans of students will receive additional insight regarding effective strategies that can be utilized when meeting with an individual who has either identified themselves as a brain injury survivor, or who you suspect may be presenting with behaviors associated with brain injury.  Chris and Amy will share how they applied, generalized, and modified some key therapeutic strategies and exercises that helped to more effectively manage daily living challenges after his therapy ended in 2001.