TREAT Emotional Awareness

TREAT stands for Training to Reconnect with Emotional Awareness Training

Some people, post Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), lose the ability to recognize emotions, or express their emotions to others. Frequently, these problems are linked to negative outcomes. This affects a much broader population than those with Alexithymia.

A little about the subject matter expert behind this App developed by CreateAbility Concepts, Inc.:
Dr. Dawn Neumann and her colleagues at Indiana University have developed a treatment program that aims to improve emotional awareness and understanding after TBI. Emotional awareness and understanding are important for controlling emotions.

The purpose of the TREAT App is to extend and operationalize Dr. Neumann’s work, and to provide an evidence-based tool designed to improve emotional awareness after TBI.

The TREAT App helps these individuals, by exposing them to a series of videos, designed to invoke an emotional response. The individual may need to ‘TAP’ into their emotions by first labeling their Thoughts, Actions, and Physical response (TAP).

For maximum benefit, the TREAT App might be used as part of a lesson plan with a researcher or clinician trained in TBI rehab. This might include training for the patient, to build them up to the point where they can use the TREAT App independently.

Each session is designed to build on the earlier sessions, and each session has a series of several scenes. The patient answers questions presented by the app after viewing each scene. Their score is computed by entering emotions from a list of approximately 660 words.

We would like to thank our sponsors:
Development of this application was supported by the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center for Information and Communications Technology Access (LiveWell RERC) which is funded by a grant from the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services under grant number 90RE5023.

Please read the following, as the TREAT App may not be helpful if any of the following conditions apply to the individual:
• They had a previous neurological disorder (e.g., stroke, autism, developmental delay), before your TBI
• They have a diagnosis of a major psychiatric disorder (e.g., schizophrenia)
• They have a degenerative neurological condition
• They have difficulty following directions
• They have a visual or hearing impairment that would impede participation
• They are unable to communicate verbally
• They have recently had medication changes
• If the individual is actively involved in psychological treatment, please ask your psychologist’s opinion on if this app may be right for them.