ABSTRACT
Traumatic brain injury represents a tremendous obstacle to effective functioning for clients, which is very often expressed through their difficulty and frustration around the issue of work return. This is not surprising in our culture and society, since the inability to return to work carries both social and economic costs, and notions of recovery of function and being normal are associated (rightly and wrongly) with return to work. Not only clients and family members, but also rehabilitation therapists, counselors, and funding agencies often see return as the signpost of successful rehabilitation and recovery after traumatic brain injury. Price and Baumann (1990) 1 point out that working is often considered the key to normalization after a traumatic brain injury, since many of these clients have already established normal developmental milestones including personal and career decisions.
