There is a significant amount of trauma associated with acquiring a spinal cord injury, and many people will struggle to manage the grief for the loss of their previous way of life. Some will adapt more easily, while others will experience depression and other mental health issues.
A clinician’s guide to working with spinal cord injury: Emotional wellbeing toolkit
Published: June 2016. Next review: 2027.
This toolkit supports clinicians to understand and manage psychosocial issues associated with acute and long-term spinal cord injury. It covers topics such as managing grief and trauma, common psychological and emotional issues experienced by people with a spinal cord injury, and ideas for handling challenging behaviours.
The toolkit highlights ways to distinguish between grief and depression and has a number of brief standardised tools to help clinicians assess issues such as mood, anxiety, pain, trauma, substance use and psychosis.
E-learning course
Published: August 2020. Next review: 2027.
Use these four e-learning modules to help you apply the toolkit.
- Module 1 – Overview of Emotional Wellbeing Toolkit, spinal cord injury model of adjustment, grief and loss
- Module 2 – Common psychological presentation (mood, pain, psychosis and substance use)
- Module 3 – Spinal cord injury and traumatic brain injury post-traumatic amnesia, sexuality, and ageing.
- Module 4 – Distress and trauma, trauma-informed care, working alongside people from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and other cultural and linguistically different backgrounds, and compassionate and self-care.
The course is free and open to all health professional graduates, students and support staff working with people who have sustained a spinal cord injury or similar condition.
Brief psychosocial clinical assessment tool
Published: October 2017. Next review: 2027.
Use these questions on psychosocial risk factors to assess clients.
Supplementary app for mobile devices
The Spinal Cord Injury Emotional Wellbeing Toolkit has a purpose-built app for phone or tablet use. It can help clinicians with just in time evidence-based support to manage the emotional challenges associated with spinal cord injury.
iPad or iPhone
- Launch the Safari app. This does not work from the Chrome app.
- Visit https://sci-emotional-wellbeing.web.app/
- Tap the icon at the bottom of the screen featuring a box with an arrow pointing up, along the bottom of the Safari window to open a menu.
- Tap ‘Add to Home Screen’. The ‘Add to Home’ dialog box will appear, with the icon that will be used for this website on the left side of the dialog box.
- Enter the name for the shortcut using the on-screen keyboard and tap ‘Add’. Safari will close automatically and you will be taken to where the icon is located on your device’s screen.
Android
- Launch the ‘Chrome’ app.
- Visit https://sci-emotional-wellbeing.web.app/
- Tap the menu icon (three dots in upper right-hand corner) and tap ‘Add to homescreen’.
- Enter a name for the shortcut and then Chrome will add it to your home screen.
