Women and Brain Injury Conference
A one day national conference to raise awareness and the profile of women that have had a brain injury.
Monday 8 September 2008
St Andrew's Healthcare, Northampton
Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), its outcome and rehabilitation as it specifically affects women, has been discussed all too rarely. Whilst this may be an understandable result of the epidemiology of TBI, with approximately a 2:1 ratio of men to women, it is surely not excusable to neglect an understanding of how brain injuries in women may differ from those in men.
Work and research from sociology, social psychology and neurobiology can evidence that there are indeed significant differences in how brain injuries impact the sexes. This one day conference, entitled Women and Brain Injury, will highlight some of the key issues that people working in this area should be aware of.
Sally Keeble MP will open the day by highlighting some of these issues and describing the political context. Research on the effects of female biology upon brain injury will then be reviewed, raising some challenges for our incorporation of gender and neurobiology. Domestic violence, a major ‘hidden’ cause of brain injuries in women, will then be addressed. This challenges our current understanding of the effects of domestic violence, as the occurrence of head and brain injury offers another explanation as to some of the distress and damage suffered by abused women.
Following presentation of this key background information, papers will then be presented that explore the practical experience of rehabilitation for women with a brain injury. Firstly, by summarising some of the key observations from 30 years of rehabilitation at the Kemsley unit, part of St Andrew’s Healthcare, and identifying some key requirements for a women’s brain injury rehabilitation service. Secondly, more recent developments at Kemsley, involving single sex pathways for rehabilitation, will be described and cases presented to further illustrate the key issues.