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The primary aim of this study was to examine predictors of Return to Productive Roles (RTPR) in individuals with ABI following participation in a community-based RTPR intervention. One hundred and thirty participants were inducted to an ABI-specific RTPR programme. At induction, information on clinical and social demographics, previous education and employment roles were collected. Participants underwent a comprehensive neuropsychological assessment at baseline and completed assessments of disability, mental health and community integration. Participants were followed up at the end of their programme to assess RTPR. Three out of four participants who entered the RTPR programme returned to productive roles. Despite the relatively high levels of anxiety and depression in the sample, people who returned to productive roles were not significantly less anxious or depressed than those who did not. Logistic regression suggested that participants who returned to productive roles following the programme had higher levels of pre-ABI work engagement, less disability and performed better on neuropsychological assessment in terms of their language skills. Results suggest that these factors which cut across specific prior experience, cognitive performance, and social and disability areas of functioning represent barriers to an effective return to productive roles for people with ABI accessing RTPR intervention.

The spread of COVID-19 has had a significant impact on global sport. This is especially true at the elite level, where it has disrupted training and competition. Concomitantly, restrictions have disrupted long-term event planning. Many elite athletes remain unsure when major events will occur and worry about further interruptions. Although some athletes have successfully adapted to the demands of the COVID-19 crisis, many have experienced difficulties adjusting. This has resulted in psychological complications including increased stress, anxiety, and depression. This article critically examines the extent to which non-cognitive skills training, in the form of increased awareness of Mental Toughness, can help elite athletes inoculate against and cope with negative psychological effects arising from the COVID-19 pandemic. Non-cognitive skills encompass intrapersonal (motivations, learning strategies, and self-regulation) and interpersonal (interactions with others) domains not directly affected by intellectual capacity. Previous research indicates that enhancement of these spheres can assist performance and enhance mental well-being. Moreover, it suggests that training in the form of increased awareness of Mental Toughness, can improve the ability to cope with COVID-19 related challenges. In this context, Mental Toughness encompasses a broad set of enabling attributes (i.e., inherent and evolved values, attitudes, emotions, and cognitions). Indeed, academics commonly regard Mental Toughness as a resistance resource that protects against stress. Accordingly, this article advocates the use of the 4/6Cs model of Mental Toughness (i.e., Challenge, Commitment, Control, and Confidence) to counter negative psychological effects arising from COVID-19.

In the UK, there exists an important “action gap” between Government advice on measures necessary to counter the threat of COVID-19, and the behavior of a significant minority of the population. There are several reasons for this disconnect, including lack of message potency (i.e., credibility and congruence), inflexible/habitual behavior patterns, prevailing beliefs (i.e., vulnerability to, and seriousness of COVID-19), and individuals valuing personal concerns above general public health. For official messages to be effective and advice adhered to, strong, coherent “strategic narratives” are required. This article, using a psychological perspective, critically examined prevailing COVID-19 UK Government announcements during the lockdown (23/03/2020) and initial easing phase (10/05/2020). Specifically, it focused on important communication inconsistencies, and identified factors that may facilitate and create barriers to the adoption of essential public health directives. This included deliberation of factors that enhanced source impact, diminished the influence of message content, and the negative consequences of contrary information. Accordingly, this article proposes a framework for providing a unifying strategic narrative on COVID-19, one that helps to maximize the impact of key messages and promote effective behavior change. This framework places an emphasis on engaging the full range of actors and considers ways of reducing the efficacy of false information. The article provides recommendations that will potentially improve the reception of government policy and suggests how strategic narratives can harness the drivers of behavioral change needed to meet challenges such as COVID-19.

BACKGROUND: Stress is common to the experience of TBI. Stressors challenge physical and psychological coping abilities and undermine wellbeing. Brain injury constitutes a specific chronic stressor. An issue that hinders the usefulness of a stress-based approach to brain injury is a lack of semantic clarity attaching to the term stress. A more precise conceptualisation of stress that embraces experienced uncertainty is allostasis. OBJECTIVE: An emerging body of research, collectively identifiable as ‘the social cure’ literature, shows that the groups that people belong to can promote adjustment, coping, and well-being amongst individuals confronted with injuries, illnesses, traumas, and stressors. The idea is deceptively simple, yet extraordinarily useful: the sense of self that individuals derive from belonging to social groups plays a key role in determining health and well-being. The objective of this research was to apply a social cure perspective to a consideration of an individual’s lived experience of TBI. METHODS: In a novel application of interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) this research has investigated one person’s lived experience in a single case study of traumatic brain injury. RESULTS: Paradox, shifting perspectives and self under stress, linked by uncertainty, were the themes identified. CONCLUSIONS: A relational approach must be key to TBI rehabilitation.

Positive behavioral support (PBS) employs applied behavioral analysis to enhance the quality of life of people who behave in challenging ways. PBS builds on the straightforward and intuitively appealing notion that if people know how to control their environments, they will have less need to behave in challenging ways. Accordingly, PBS focuses on the perspective of those who have behavioral issues, and assesses success via reduction in incidences of challenging behaviors. The qualitative research presented in this report approaches PBS from a different viewpoint and, using thematic analysis, considers the impact of PBS training on the lived experience of staff who deliver services. Thirteen support staff who work for a company supplying social care and supported living services for people with learning disabilities and complex needs in the northwest of England took part. Analysis of interviews identified five major themes. These were: (1) training: enjoyable and useful; (2) widening of perspective: different ways of thinking; (3) increased competence: better outcomes; (4) spill over into private lives: increased tolerance in relationships; and (5) reflecting on practice and moving to a holistic view: “I am aware that people…are not just being naughty.” These themes evidenced personal growth on the part of service providers receiving training. Explicitly, they demonstrated that greater awareness of PBS equipped recipients with an appropriate set of values, and the technical knowledge required to realize them.

There is increasing evidence that identification with social groups can protect and enhance health, establishing a kind of ‘social cure’. However, for those affected by chronic or disabling conditions such as acquired brain injury (ABI), their identity may also represent a burden, a form of ‘social curse’. The present study explored the identity benefits and burdens available to 15 participants living with ABI using semi‐structured interviews. The qualitative data was then analysed systematically using thematic analysis. The findings highlight social identity changes as central to the experience of brain injury. Participants reported changes in their social networks and social group memberships after injury. Identity loss and reduced social support were described as disabling. Engagement in meaningful group activity with others affected by ABI and access to affected peers enabled new group‐based resources such as social support. In this way, group activity can be seen as a form of identity enactment that can drive social cure effects. Similarly, adaptation to life post injury was demonstrably linked to social identity processes pointing to the importance of a social cure approach to rehabilitation.

peer-reviewed, The central argument put forward in this thesis is that, in the context of acquired brain injury (ABI) social identity matters. The first article is a theoretical paper which reviews an emerging literature that is trying to draw together social psychology and neuropsychology in the study of ABI. This article argues that the social identity approach is an appropriate vehicle for such integration and introduces the concept of identity sub-types based on belonging and based on participation in activities. Social support is recognized as an important factor in rehabilitation following ABI. The second paper is an empirical study which employs the concepts of affiliative and self as doer identities to explore reciprocal relationships between social identity, social support, and emotional status following ABI. Results support a hypothesised model indicating that affiliative identities have a significant indirect relationship with emotional status via social support and self as doer identification. Evidence supports an ‘upward spiral’ between social identity and social support such that affiliative identity makes social support possible and social support drives self as doer identities. The third paper examines relationships between cause of ABI, level of disability, stigma, survivor identity, and quality of life amongst a group of ABI survivors. This study found that cause of injury and disability severity, had a significant mediated relationship with quality of life outcomes via stigma and survivor identity. The fourth paper, presenting the third and final study, was a longitudinal investigation that explored how the understandings that people have of themselves, as expressed in their affiliative and self as doer self-categorisations, impact anxiety. Anxiety is of particular importance following ABI because anxiety has been identified as a significant predictor of functional outcomes. Results indicate that, over time, identity continuity and multiplicity following ABI con