Assisting families of head-injured survivors through a family support programme.

The purpose of this project was to develop, implement and evaluate a community-based education/support programme for families of head-injured survivors. Three measures were used in evaluating the programme: (a) a written evaluation by the participants, (b) the clinical impressions of the programme facilitators and the principal investigator, and (c) the three outcome measures: coping, self-esteem, and well-being. A pretest-posttest quasi-experimental design was used to test the effect of the intervention (the programme) on the outcome measures. Data yield mixed results and suggest that the programme had considerable practical but not statistical significance.