SOFIA blog post #1 by Sarah Northcott

Welcome to this first blog post for the SOFIA research project!

This is a project exploring a psychological intervention called Solution Focused Brief Therapy for people living with post-stroke aphasia. Aphasia occurs when the communication centre of the brain is damaged, and can cause difficulties with talking, understanding, reading or writing.

This blog is to share our research with you. There are sections on the blog site where we discuss:

• solution focused brief therapy (click here)
• information for people with aphasia who would like to take part (click here)
• project details (click here), including my journey in setting up the project (click here)
• links to useful articles and information

We hope there will be sections of interest to clinicians, people living with stroke and aphasia, their friends and family members, as well as other researchers.

I’m looking forward to writing blog posts. The posts will discuss:

• reflections on using Solution Focused Brief Therapy
• how we are getting on with the research
• personal stories and commentaries written by other people involved in the project

We also hope that this blog will be a way of hearing from you: we’d love to hear your perspective on our research, and what you would find useful in these blog posts.

It has been my privilege to listen to the stories of people living with stroke and aphasia over the last fifteen years. Too often people with aphasia are not able to access high quality psychological support due to their language difficulties. Through our research we hope to show that it is possible to make psychological therapies work well for people with aphasia. In developing this research project I have worked closely with numerous people including people with aphasia, other researchers, and clinicians. Through  this blog I hope to share some of what we have learnt along the way.

*** This project is hosted by City, University of London and funded by the Stroke Association Jack and Averil (Mansfield) Bradley Fellowship Award for Stroke Research ***

Finally, a big thank you to Dr Abi Roper and Katie Monnelly for all their help in setting up this blog!