Rehabilitation & brain health support
Sunshine Coast Cognitive Health provides individualised psychological support for people experiencing cognitive difficulties, as well as people who want to take a proactive approach to their brain health. These two areas can overlap and assistance is shaped according to your situation. Collaboration with, or referrals to other health professionals are made where appropriate.
Cognitive rehabilitation
For people experiencing cognitive changes or difficulties, support may include practical compensatory strategies, adjustment-focused psychological support, and values-based goal setting. Where appropriate, I may also suggest digital brain training programs or other cognitively stimulating activities, and provide guidance setting these up. The approach is personalised and may include strategies for managing difficulties with memory, attention, processing speed, problem-solving, or other cognitive skills.
Brain health support
For people interested in taking a proactive approach to their long-term brain health, support may focus on relevant modifiable risk and protective factors, sustainable behaviour change, and values-based goal setting. Where appropriate, digital brain training programs and other cognitively stimulating activities may be recommended, for which I can provide practical guidance on how to get started. The support is always tailored to your individual circumstances, interests, and goals.
Who can benefit?
Those living with an acquired brain brain injury (ABI), from a stroke, concussion/traumatic brain injury, or illness, ADHD, or intellectual disability.
People experiencing mild cognitive impairment or the early stages of dementia.
If you have noticed specific or general changes in your cognition, such as impaired memory, processing speed, attention, or problem solving.
Someone with no current cognitive concerns who wants to be optimise their functioning, and be proactive and potentially prevent or delay 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 identified specific changeable lifestyle factors that influence brain health, with 45% of dementia cases being potentially preventable or delayed by addressing 14 different factors. 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 value-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 maintain normal function despite damage, aging, or disease by drawing on neural networks built up over a lifetime and flexibly recruiting alternative pathways).
Working alongside your medical team
Some factors that affect brain health are medical/physical and best managed with your GP, 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 most encouraging developments in brain health research is how much may be within our influence. The 2024 Lancet Commission on dementia prevention concluded that around 45% of dementia cases worldwide are potentially preventable, or able to be delayed, by addressing the following 14 modifiable risk factors:
Hearing Loss
Less education
High LDL Cholesterol
Depression
Traumatic Brain Injury
Physical Inactivity
Diabetes
Smoking
Hypertension
Obesity
Excessive Alcohol
Social Isolation
Air Pollution
Visual Loss
Some of these factors are entirely medical and therefore best managed with your GP or other specialist. Other factors can be targeted holistically. My role is to help you take meaningful action on the factors that respond to therapy and lifestyle change, in addition to pointing you in the right direction when other health professionals would be of benefit for treatment and collaboration.
Continuing education/learning to build and maintain cognitive reserve can be achieved by engaging in cognitively stimulating tasks such as completing puzzles, learning a new language/instrument/skill, or by using new evidence based brain training programs such as BrainHQ.
Additionally, lowering alcohol use; decreasing depression, anxiety, stress, blood pressure and obesity; increasing physical activity; quitting smoking; and enhancing your social network can all be addressed through values identification and goal setting while utilising psychological therapies such as acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT), cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), and mindfulness meditation.