The lived experience of adolescents and youth with brain injury: navigating new landscapes

The aim of this review was to consider the adolescent and youth perspective on living with a brain injury (BI) given the importance of this key developmental stage and dearth of literature for this cohort. It aimed to synthesise qualitative research that has a focus on exploring adolescent and youth understanding of and meaning-making processes around navigating living with a BI. A systematic literature search and meta-ethnographic synthesis of qualitative studies was conducted. Eighteen studies were included and appraised using the CASP tool for qualitative research (CASP, 2018). None of the studies evaluated were deemed to be of a low enough quality to be removed from this review. Six overarching themes (third-order constructs) were developed from 37 underlying researcher-interpreted themes (second-order constructs) that had been identified within the research. These are; 1) navigating the new landscape of life with a brain injury; direct consequences, 2) navigating the relational landscape of life with a brain injury; peer and support relationships, 3) an altered family landscape in life with a brain injury; relational dynamics and support, 4) cognitive processes in relation to understanding changes, 5) cognitive and emotional processes of adjustment to changes and loss 6) coping and post-traumatic growth. The findings provide further supporting evidence for the specificity of adolescence in living with a brain injury and highlights some of the described processes related to change following brain injury.