Professor Grahame Simpson
Professor Grahame Simpson is Director of the Brain Injury Rehabilitation Research Group at the Ingham Institute for South Western Sydney, and Adjunct Professor in the School of Human Services and Social Work at Griffith University. He has dual professional qualifications as a social worker and psychologist, and has worked for the past 30 years as a clinician and researcher based at the Liverpool Brain Injury Rehabilitation Unit in Liverpool Hospital. Grahame’s research interests focus on positive adjustment to traumatic injury in the areas of mental health including suicide prevention, employment, sexual health, community participation and family resilience. He has over 100 publications including books, chapters and articles published in peer review journals and has been awarded more than $14 million dollars in research funding. He is current Co-Editor of Brain Impairment, the official journal of the Australasian Society for the Study of Brain Impairment; member of two other editorial boards (Journal of Head Trauma Rehabilitation; Australian Social Work); immediate past convenor of the National Research Committee of the Australian Association of Social Workers; and co-founder of the International Network of Social Workers in Acquired Brain Injury.
PRESENTATION TITLE: Resilience, spirituality and hope: An alternative paradigm for understanding family outcomes after traumatic injury
For too long the adaptive responses that families make when a close relative sustains a traumatic injury have gone unnoticed. While the personal and emotional costs experienced by family caregivers providing unpaid care to their relatives is well understood, this only comprises part of the story. Studying the role of resilience, spirituality and hope in contributing to the wellbeing of family caregivers involves a paradigm shift towards a strengths-based perspective. As well as expanding our understanding of the challenges and responses made by family caregivers, this orientation lays the groundwork for developing new programs to enhance well-being among families supporting relatives with traumatic injury.
