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Family experiences up to seven years after a severe traumatic brain injury–family interviews

STENBERG, Maud
STALNACKE, Britt-Marie
SAVEMAN, Britt-Inger
June 2020

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Purpose: To explore the experiences of being a family with one member suffering from severe traumatic brain injury (STBI) up to 7 years earlier through narrative family interviews.

 

Methods: There are few studies where a family as a unit, including persons with STBI, are interviewed together. This study used a family systems research approach following a qualitative interpretative design. Therefore, 21 families with a total of 47 family members were interviewed. Qualitative content analysis was used to reveal categories with sub-categories and a theme.

 

Results: “From surviving STBI towards stability, through the unknown, into a new everyday life and a new future as a family” characterized the implicit message. The results revealed two categories both with three subcategories. The first category characterized the rapid change from a normal everyday life to one of uncertainty and finally to one of stability, and the second category described how it is to adapt as a family after STBI.

 

Conclusions: Long-term experiences of STBI show the importance for the whole family of belonging to a context, having a job, and having something to belong to as a way to achieve stability. Families` feelings of loneliness and lack of treatment and support are challenges for professionals when trying to involve families in care and rehabilitation.

Activity limitations and participation restrictions in people with multiple sclerosis: a detailed 10-year perspective

CONRADSSON, David
YTTERBERD+G, Charlotte
ENGELKES, Catharina
JOHANSSON, Sverker
GOTTBERG, Kristina
June 2019

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Aim: To conduct a detailed investigation into changes in activity limitations and participation restrictions over 10 years in people with mild, moderate and severe multiple sclerosis.

 

Methods: This study was a 10-year longitudinal study of 264 people with multiple sclerosis living in Stockholm County, Sweden. Ten-year changes in personal and instrumental activities in daily living were assessed using the Katz Activities in Daily Living Index Extended and participation in social/lifestyle activities using the Frenchay Activities Index.

 

Results: While people with moderate multiple sclerosis, compared to baseline, demonstrated significantly higher proportions of dependency in most activities of personal and instrumental activities in daily living at the 10-year follow-up, the mild group primarily increased their dependency in instrumental activities and the severe group in personal activities. Significantly higher proportions of the moderate group showed restricted participation in domestic and outdoor activities whereas the mild group only showed restrictions in a few domains of participation. A majority of people with severe multiple sclerosis showed restricted participation in all social/lifestyle activities at baseline and the 10-year follow-up.

 

Conclusions: Prominent long-term increases in activity limitations and participation restrictions occurred across the spectrum of disease severity but was most pronounced in those more moderately affected.

Cognitive Constraints on the Simple View of Reading: A Longitudinal Study in Children With Intellectual Disabilities

VAN WINGERDEN, Evelien
SEGERS, Eliane
VAN BALKOM, Hans
VERHOEVEN, Ludo
2018

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The present article aimed to explore how the development of reading comprehension is affected when its cognitive basis is compromised. The simple view of reading was adopted as the theoretical framework. The study followed 76 children with mild intellectual disabilities (average IQ = 60.38, age 121 months) across a period of 3 years. The children were assessed for level of reading comprehension (outcome variable) and its precursors decoding and listening comprehension, in addition to linguistic skills (foundational literacy skills, rapid naming, phonological short-term memory, verbal working memory, vocabulary, and grammar) and non- linguistic skills (nonverbal reasoning and temporal processing). Reading comprehension was predicted by decoding and listening comprehension but also by foundational literacy skills and nonverbal reasoning. It is con- cluded that intellectual disabilities can affect the development of reading comprehension indirectly via linguistic skills but also directly via nonlinguis- tic nonverbal reasoning ability.

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