Integrated Behavioral Intervention and Person-Centered Therapy Within Community-Based Treatment of an Adult With Acquired Brain Injury

Abstract

We present the case of a 30-year-old woman who had acquired brain injury (ABI) and demonstrated clinically challenging behaviors (verbally abusive outbursts toward care providers and elopement) within her community-based group home. Following a baseline phase of evaluation, she collaborated with clinicians and care providers in developing a treatment plan that included personal goal setting, differential token reinforcement, communication training, graphic performance feedback, and reinforcement fading. During 10 months of intervention, clinically challenging behaviors steadily decreased from baseline levels and low-frequency occurrence was maintained at 3-, 6-, and 9-month follow-up assessments. As the result of treatment, the woman also avoided prior psychiatric hospitalizations, enjoyed more frequent access to pleasurable activities outside her residence, and enrolled in a college course. The study illustrates an effective person-centered therapy approach combined with behavioral intervention for persons who have ABI and experience community-living adjustment difficulties.

Re-Establishing Solid Food Consumption in a Person With Traumatic Brain Injury and Extended Food Avoidance/Restriction Using a Multicomponent Behavioral Intervention

“…Although these studies and the present case report featured different procedures, it appears that engaging the patient fully in the treatment process and carefully structuring sessions to slowly increase oral consumption while avoiding food refusal are core strategies contributing to positive outcome. Engaging a person with brain injury in their behavioral treatment conceptualization and intervention design is consistent with other research using an integrated person-centered therapy approach to applied behavioral intervention (Ricciardi et al, 2020).…”

An Integrated Behavioral-Neuropsychiatric Treatment Plan Reduces Severe Challenging Behavior in an Adolescent With Neurobehavioral Complications of Neonatal Brain Injury

“…As a result of these behaviors, the student received numerous restrictive interventions in the form of restraint and involuntary transport to a hospital emergency department for emergency psychiatric evaluation, prior to intervention. However, a “least-restrictive” approach was used which minimized reliance on these interventions, and the intervention was person-centered in that the participant himself became a collaborator on the form and features of his behavioral intervention (Ricciardi, Bouchard, Dould, & Luiselli, 2020).…”