Rehabilitation & brain health support
Sunshine Coast Cognitive Health provides individualised psychological support for people experiencing cognitive difficulties, and for people who want to take a proactive approach to their brain health. The two areas can overlap, and support is shaped to your situation. I collaborate with or refer to other health professionals where appropriate.
Cognitive rehabilitation
For people experiencing cognitive changes or difficulties. Support may include:
Practical strategies for managing difficulties with memory, attention, processing speed, problem-solving or other cognitive skills
Adjustment-focused psychological support
Values-based goal setting
Digital brain training or other cognitively stimulating activities where appropriate, with help setting them up
The approach is always personalised to you.
Brain health support
For people who want to take a proactive approach to their long-term brain health. Support may include:
A focus on the modifiable risk and protective factors most relevant to you
Sustainable behaviour change
Values-based goal setting
Digital brain training or other cognitively stimulating activities where appropriate, with practical guidance on getting started
Support is always tailored to your circumstances, interests and goals.
Who can benefit?
Brain injury, ADHD or intellectual disability Living with an acquired brain injury (ABI), for example after a stroke, concussion, head injury or illness, or living with ADHD or intellectual disability.
Mild cognitive impairment or early dementia Experiencing mild cognitive impairment or the early stages of dementia.
Changes you have noticed Specific or general changes in your thinking, such as memory, processing speed, attention or problem solving.
Looking after your brain health No current cognitive concerns, but you want to optimise your functioning and be proactive about lowering your risk of future changes.
What treatment involves
My approach is practical and personalised. Rather than a fixed program, we work together on what matters most to you. Depending on your situation, this can include:
Practical strategies for everyday difficulties
For people managing existing cognitive changes, much of the work focuses on practical, individualised strategies to make daily life easier. Working around difficulties with memory, attention, organisation, and thinking so you can stay as independent and confident as possible.
Addressing modifiable lifestyle factors
Research has linked a number of changeable lifestyle factors to brain health and dementia risk. I help identify which are most relevant to you and build a realistic plan to act on them.
Goal-setting and psychological therapy
Together we set clear, realistic, meaningful values-based goals, and use evidence-based psychological strategies to help you work toward them, by enhancing motivation and confidence, removing psychological barriers, and providing coping strategies.
Building cognitive reserve
Keeping your brain active and engaged helps build what researchers call cognitive reserve (the brain's ability to keep working well despite damage, ageing or illness, by drawing on connections built up over a lifetime).
Working alongside your medical team
Some factors that affect brain health are medical or physical and best managed with your GP, a specialist or other allied health professionals. Where that's the case, my role is to support and complement their care, not to replace it.
Modifiable lifestyle factors for brain health
One of the more encouraging findings in brain health research is how much may be within our influence. The 2024 Lancet Commission on dementia estimated that, across whole populations, up to 45% of dementia cases might be delayed or reduced if the following 14 risk factors were removed entirely. That is a population estimate rather than a prediction for any one person, but it suggests these factors are worth working on at any stage of life:
Hearing loss
Less education
High LDL cholesterol
Depression
Traumatic brain injury
Physical inactivity
Diabetes
Smoking
Hypertension
Obesity
Excessive alcohol
Air pollution
Social isolation
Visual loss
Some of these factors are entirely medical and best managed with your GP or other specialist. Others can be targeted holistically. My role is to help you take meaningful action on the factors that respond to therapy and lifestyle change, and to point you in the right direction when other health professionals would be of benefit for treatment and collaboration.
Keep learning Learning and mental challenge help build and maintain cognitive reserve. Activities such as puzzles, or learning a new language, instrument or skill, are linked with better long-term cognitive outcomes. In one large US trial that followed people for 20 years, those who did a specific speed-of-processing training program, with later booster sessions, had fewer dementia diagnoses. Where it suits you, I can suggest programs like this and help you get set up.
Habits, mood and connection Drinking less alcohol, being more active, quitting smoking, building your social connections, and managing mood, stress, blood pressure and weight can all be worked on together. We start from what matters to you, set goals, and use approaches such as acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) and mindfulness.
Sleep Sleep is an important foundation for brain health, influencing emotional regulation, cognition, physical activity, social engagement and our capacity to maintain many of these protective changes. Addressing sleep difficulties alongside stress, anxiety and depression can support more restorative sleep while also promoting broader physical, psychological and cognitive wellbeing.