Treatment Resources

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Cognitive Behaviour Therapy for Anxiety and Depression - Adapted for Brain Injury (CBT-ABI): A Treatment Manual

Use the CBT-ABI manual to deliver adapted Cognitive Behaviour Therapy to treat depression and anxiety in adults with brain injury.

Description: The CBT-ABI manual provides a comprehensive practical guide to delivering Cognitive Behaviour Therapy (CBT) for depression and anxiety with individuals with traumatic brain injury. Both the content and processes of CBT have been adapted in a variety of ways to compensate for the cognitive difficulties that commonly occur after brain injury. The manual contains richly described, user-friendly instructions and tips for therapists including links to helpful demonstration videos, as well as numerous handouts for clients with TBI. These handouts also come in a separate electronic file enabling therapists to adapt and print them as needed. This CBT-ABI program has been demonstrated to be effective in improving depression and anxiety symptoms after TBI in a rigorous randomised controlled trial (Ponsford, Lee, Wong et al., 2016). It is an essential, evidence-based, clinically useful treatment guide for clinicians working with individuals experiencing depression and anxiety after brain injury.

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Communicate with Confidence

A social communication resource to develop pragmatic communication skills

Description: Support your clients with this practical resource to guide the development of social communication skills for adolescents and adults. Core pragmatic skills are essential for everyday communication and can be impacted by ABI, developmental disability, mental health or simply shyness. Confident use of communication is essential for success in relationships with peers, family and at work. Communicate with Confidence takes a positive approach to social communication and uses self-assessment tools to build on the individual’s own perception of their style of interaction. You can select exercises to develop self-awareness of important communication skills to build confidence. Information, hints and practical exercises for capacity building in five key communication skills; listening, talking, greetings and partings, manners and extending social networks are provided. These exercises will build confidence across a hierarchy of communication situations that are meaningful to the individual client.

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Errorless Learning in Dementia: A Practical Manual

Errorless learning in dementia – a practical manual for setting up an everyday skill training

Errorless learning in dementia is a protocol for setting up a skill training aimed at teaching individuals with dementia everyday activities.


Description: Errorless learning can be applied in people with dementia in various stages of the disease, e.g. those living at home or in a care facility. This manual provides practical information on how to teach people with dementia everyday skills, with an emphasis on error reduction during the learning process. It provides concrete examples of activities that can be trained using a step by step approach, incorporating feed-forward instructions and using external cues, as well as instructional videos. It enables professional caregivers to setup an error-reducing intervention in their care facility. Errorless learning has been successfully used to teach people with dementia everyday tasks, such as chores, leisure activities and using electronic devices, and has been implemented in care facilities for people with dementia. The current evidence base suggests that errorless learning can be effective in activating individuals with dementia and aid in optimizing their learning capacity.​

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IMPACT - Intervention for Metacognition and Social Participation: An Acquired Cognitive-Communication Disorder Treatment

Treating cognitive-communication disorders made easy with the structured IMPACT program.

Description: IMPACT Intervention for Metacognition and Social Participation: an Acquired Cognitive-Communication Disorder Treatment is an empirically tested program designed to rehabilitate cognitive-communication in people with traumatic brain injuries or any other condition that may impair cognitive-communication. The structured manual details 12 separate individual and group sessions of 1 hour in length that are sequentially organized.  The early sessions begin with introduction to metacognitive strategies, setting goals and establishing group membership. This progresses to reflection, problem-solving and establishing ongoing supports at completion of the program. The step-by-step manual provides detailed instructions for each session and is supplemented with templates and handouts for easy treatment administration.

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Improving First Impressions: A Step-by-Step Social Skills Program

Improving First Impressions: social skills training for people with cognitive impairment

 A step by step manual for remediating social skills



Description: ‘Improving First Impressions’ is an empirically tested manualized program for social skills training.  Designed for people with acquired brain damage, this program is based upon well-established behavioural principle for reinforcing positive social skills. The difference is that this program is designed specifically for people who have poor new learning and difficulties with executive control.  Consequently, it is suitable for any client group where the improvement of social skills is an important target but the participants may have cognitive impairment. The structured manual details 12 separate sessions of 1-2 hours in length that are designed to address basic social skills that are important in forming first impressions, such as greetings, starting conversations, changing topics, listening to others. The manual provides step-by-step instructions and is supplemented with detailed handouts to accompany each session.  The program is designed for training social skills in two or more clients at a time.

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Telehealth Making Sense of Brain Tumour
(Tele-MAST) Manual: A practical guide for therapists

Telehealth Making Sense of Brain Tumour (TeleMAST) Manual: A practical guide for therapists.

Use Tele-MAST therapist manual to provide individualised psychosocial support for people with brain tumour and their families.

Description: Individuals with brain tumour and their family members can experience considerable distress associated with the diagnosis, an uncertain prognosis and complex neurological and functional impairments. The psychological support needs of people with brain tumour are often overlooked and there is a lack of brain tumour-specific psychological therapy resources. Delivery of the Making Sense of Brain Tumour (MAST) program and its telehealth adaptation (Tele-MAST) is guided by this therapist manual, which supports health professionals to deliver person-centred and goal directed counselling and rehabilitation to adults with brain tumour and their family members. The benefits of the MAST program have been endorsed by international palliative care guidelines, with two RCTs (Ownsworth et al., 2015; Ownsworth et al., 2023) supporting the efficacy of the program for improving mental health and quality of life. The program has also been found to be cost-effective for the Australian healthcare system (Gordon et al., 2024). The therapist manual is intended for use by professionals with qualifications in psychology, social work, and counselling. The neuropsychological assessment and psychotherapy approaches require appropriate training at a post-graduate level.

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Making the Most of Your Memory: An Everyday Memory Skills Program

Use this memory training program to guide small group interventions for patients with epilepsy, stroke and other acquired brain injuries.





Description: Making the Most of Your Memory is an intervention manual for clinicians to guide delivery of a small group program, which aims to improve understanding of memory function and practice everyday memory skills. A range of compensatory memory strategies, both internal and external, are demonstrated and applied to real-world situations (within sessions and through homework tasks), and psychoeducation helps patients to understand their memory function and the impact of factors like brain injury, sleep, stress, medications, drugs/alcohol and mood on everyday functioning. The kit includes a manual describing the 6-week memory training program, handouts and digital facilitator slide templates. This memory program has been designed to be delivered by neuropsychologists and other clinicians involved in the rehabilitation of cognitive problems following acquired brain injury or in the context of epilepsy. The program was evaluated with groups of outpatients with a range of different neurological disorders, including epilepsy, stroke and traumatic brain injury.

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Managing Social Anxiety following Traumatic Brain Injury: A cognitive behavioural program

Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) especially designed for people with acquired brain injuries.






Description: This manual has been empirically tested and shown to be an effective means to provide CBT for social anxiety in people with traumatic brain injury and other forms of brain damage. It uses classic CBT approaches to managing social anxiety that are modified to be simple and effective for people with cognitive impairments. The structured manual details nine, hour-long sessions. The first commences with an introduction to a model of social anxiety, and the development of personal goals followed by seven sessions that work through strategies to manage physical feelings, negative thoughts and other unhelpful behaviours and cognitions with a final review session. The manual provides step-by-step instructions and is supplemented with simple handouts and homework sheets that can be freely copied.

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Reading a Smile (and Other Great Expressions): An Emotion Perception Treatment Program

Reading a smile and other great expressions: a treatment for emotion perception.

Remediating emotion recognition is now possible with this structured program.

Description: Reading a smile (and other great expressions) is an empirically tested program designed to rehabilitate emotion recognition in people with acquired brain injuries or any other condition that may impair emotion perception. The structured manual details 13 separate sessions of 1-2 hours in length that are hierarchically organized.  Early sessions commences with simple exercises in emotion perception and later ones work on more complex ecologically valid situations. The manual provides step-by-step instructions and is supplemented with colourful cards, board games and videos.

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Retraining Activities of Daily Living During Post-Traumatic Amnesia following Traumatic Brain Injury: Therapy Manual

Description: This therapy manual (developed by Dr Jessica Trevena-Peters, Dr Adam McKay and Prof Jennie Ponsford) details skills (activities of daily living) retraining for individuals in post-traumatic amnesia (PTA) following brain injury. This intervention guide is based on an evidence-based approach. The manual provides background information regarding PTA, an outline of the evidence underpinning the approach, and guiding principles for intervention delivery, particularly procedural and errorless learning. Activities of daily living addressed in the manual include personal care (bathing, grooming, dressing), self-feeding, and light meal preparation. Recommendations regarding management and assessment of agitation, PTA assessment, and goal setting are also included.

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TBI Express: Social communication training for people with TBI and their communication partners

TBI Express: A social communication training manual for people with traumatic brain injury (TBI) and their communication partners. Use TBI Express to help improve communication and conversation for people with traumatic brain injury and their family members or carers.

Description: TBI Express is a communication training program for people with traumatic brain injury, their families, friends and carers. Sometimes a brain injury affects how a person communicates. They may speak too much or not enough, have trouble staying on topic or not be able to think of what to say. Treatment can improve communication after traumatic brain injury. However, families and friends often don’t know how to help. TBI Express can support families and friends to find the best ways to help communication after brain injury. The TBI Express kit includes a manual and DVD resource for delivering the program to either a group including both people with TBI and family members / carers, or a group of people with TBI only. Our research found including communication partners in training achieved the best outcomes.

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TBIconneCT Clinician Manual: Connecting People Living with Traumatic Brain Injury to Conversation Training

Use TBIconneCT to help improve communication and conversation for people with traumatic brain injury and their family members or carers

Description: TBIconneCT is a program designed to help people with traumatic brain injury and their family members, friends or carers improve their communication and have better conversations together. The TBIconneCT kit comprises a clinician manual and USB, which includes slides of module content, printable handouts, video resources and clinician notes to support the delivery of each module. TBIconneCT was based on the original TBI Express program but reduced in length and designed for clinicians to use with individual families. The program consists of ten sessions that a person with TBI and one of their key communication partners is guided through by a speech pathologist. The program has been tested for delivery both in-person and via videoconferencing. Processes incorporated in the program include setting goals for conversation, learning about good communication skills and practising skills together in real conversations. Now available from ASSBI: TBIconneCT is a program for improving communication skills after traumatic brain injury. Visit the TBIconneCT YouTube channel for information for clinicians and families.

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