Course Overview

This course was created and provided by the Virtual Center of Excellence (VCE), a former project of the Detroit Wayne Integrated Health Network (DWIHN). Content and format will be updated in the near future to address current accessibility standards. If you are unable to access the content in this section, please contact the imp support team for assistance.

Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and Substance Use (SU), by Carolyn Lemsky, Ph.D., C.Psych., may be watched independently of our other offerings on the topic of TBI. The following topic areas are covered within this course: (1) problematic substance use and its relationship with traumatic brain injury; (2) how to talk about the risk of substance use after traumatic brain injury; (3) screening for problematic substance use; and (4) models of care for co-occurring brain injury and substance use.

  • Duration: 1.0 hour
  • Credit Hours: MCBAP-R (0.0), MCBAP-S (1.0), Mi-CEC (0.0), Nursing (0.0)

Topics Covered

Defining Substance Use and Abuse After a Traumatic Brain Injury

This course has been designed for those behavioral health professionals working with clients that have suffered a traumatic brain injury. This course will discuss the differences between substance use and substance abuse in regards to those TBI clients.

Communicating Substance Abuse with TBI Clients

As a behavioral health professional, communicating information that best supports client treatment is inherently important. This course provides best practices for communicating the warning signs of substance abuse to this cohort. 

Screening for High-Risk Use with Clients 

This course has been designed to provide the participants with information regarding how to screen your clients for potential high-risk substance use. This course will provide evidence-based best practices for identifying high-risk behavior. 

Co-Occurring Disorders

Although covered in other courses, this course provides additional information regarding co-occurring disorders with clients that have suffered a traumatic brain injury. Unlike other courses, this course focuses primarily on substance use disorder (SUD) with TBI clients. 

Additional Considerations

According to some statistics, brain injury survivors are twice as likely to have abused alcohol/substance prior to their injury and up to 20% of survivors will develop a substance use disorder after injury.


Course Objectives

  • Define problematic substance use and how it relates to TBI.
  • How to talk with clients about the risks of substance use after brain injury.
  • How to screen for problematic substance use.
  • Review models of care for co-occurring brain injury and substance use.

What People Are Saying

I enjoyed this module as we got to hear from providers and consumers regarding how programming differs from other supports/services. I have been working in this field for many years and this video was extremely helpful as a reminder to me.

- Tess G.