ABSTRACT
Professionals can tell people with acquired brain injury (ABI) that they suffer from a chronic condition; some are advised to take early retirement or seek a disability pension. Maintaining hope and seeing possibilities for further development play an important role in coping with and recovering from ABI. Hope is created by discovering a desired future and taking steps toward it. Its counterpart, despair, can be understood as the complete loss or absence of hope. Hopelessness is associated with demoralization, impaired well-being, and poor quality of life. Demoralization was originally proposed by Jerome Frank, who described it as the state of mind of a person deprived of spirit or courage, disheartened, bewildered, and thrown into disorder or confusion. Demoralization always takes place within the context of a past, present, anticipated, or imagined stressful situation. The combination of subjective incompetence with depression or other forms of nonspecific or specific distress constitutes demoralization.
