Women's health and behavioral health issues in health care reform.

As health care reform promises to change the landscape of health care delivery, its potential impact on women's health looms large. Whereas health and mental health systems have historically been fragmented, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) mandates integrated health care as the strategy for reform. Current systems fragment women's health not only in their primary care, mental health, obstetrical, and gynecological needs, but also in their roles as the primary caregivers for parents, spouses, and children. Changes in reimbursement, and in restructuring financing and care coordination systems through accountable care organizations and medical homes, will potentially improve women's health care.

Women with Disabilities: cultural competence in rehabilitation psychology.

Women with Disabilities represent a cultural group with specific issues. Rehabilitation psychologists are encouraged to familiarize themselves with some of those issues in order to deliver culturally relevant treatment. An overview is provided of psychological guidelines for attending to cultural issues in assessment, treatment, and research. Broad issues faced by Women with Disabilities are described. Disability-specific safety concerns are discussed with attention to ways in which they might be addressed by rehabilitation psychologists.

Overlooked but critical: traumatic brain injury as a consequence of interpersonal violence.

Despite evidence that more than 80% of female victims of intimate partner violence, seen for medical treatment of violence-related injuries, have sustained facial injuries, traumatic brain injury is often overlooked as a consequence of those injuries. This article reviews the scant literature available and examines research on equivalent injuries sustained by athletes. Practical domains of symptoms are described, as is a review of literature pertinent to culturally relevant rehabilitation for victims sustaining traumatic brain injuries.

Disability in the family: a life span perspective.

This article provides an overview of disability in families. The goal of the article is to raise awareness of the status of people with disabilities and their families to develop culturally relevant psychological support. Families have widely varying perspectives on disability; those perspectives influence responses to disability from the preconception and prenatal developmental stages through old age. An international literature review is provided with consideration of cultural meanings of disability, preparation for dealing with disability, coping strategies, support, developmental dynamics, competing needs of family members, and ethics. Voices of people with disabilities and their families are included.

The role of neuropsychological testing and evaluation: when to refer.

This article examines neuropsychological deficits associated with several medical disorders (HIV infection, sickle cell disease, diabetes, and Turner syndrome), psychiatric disorders (schizophrenia, conduct disorder, mood disorder, and substance abuse disorder), and traumatic brain injury, especially as a consequence of child and relationship abuse. The literature reviewed includes attention to developmental and sociocultural considerations (gender, ethnicity, interpersonal violence, family function). A brief overview of changes in neuropsychological practice is provided. The focus of the article is on the use of neuropsychological evaluation as a first step in rehabilitation for adolescents with neuropsychological deficits. A complex clinical case evaluated with the Ackerman-Banks Neuropsychological Rehabilitation Battery is included to demonstrate the way in which identification of neuropsychological strengths and weaknesses can be used to develop treatment recommendations.