Impact of a brain injury - part 2

The law firm of Aaron Waxman and Associates handles many types of disability claims and has successfully represented clients’ interests in personal injury matters.

Brain injuries are serious personal injuries. Previously our blog discussed some of the was a brain injury can impact a brain injury survivor’s life.

Having a brain injury is life-altering and can affect the many facets of a person’s life.

Here is a list of further cognitive changes that can result from a brain injury:

Lack of Insight: This occurs when a person finds it challenging to see and accept changes to his or her thinking and behaviour. The person may deny the effects of the brain injury and have unreasonable expectations about what he or she is able to do.

Poor Concentration: The individual is easily distracted or loses concentration easily. The person has a short concentration span.

Slowed Responses: A brain injury survivor may be slow to perform tasks or to answer questions, or have difficulty keeping up in conversations. As a result, his or her capacity to respond quickly in an emergency may be reduced or lost.

Poor planning and Problem-Solving: A person may experience difficulty with problem solving skills and planning and organizational tasks. Problems with decision making and complex tasks may arise.

Lack of Initiative: A brain injury survivor may require prompting to do every day tasks like grooming and bathing or participate in conversation.

Socially Inappropriate Behaviour: People who have suffered from a brain injury may experience difficulty judging how to behave in various social situations. This can include making conversation with strangers and making inappropriate advances.

Communication: The ability to start or participate in a conversation, interpret and respond to social cues, show interest in others, use humour appropriately, shift between topics of conversation and regulate volume and tone of voice may all be affected by having a brain injury. Brain injury survivors often lose their listening skills and may talk excessively and due to memory problems, repeat topics.

Emotional Lability: The same way brain injury survivors may have difficulty with controlling their behaviours, they may have difficulty controlling their emotions. Rapid mood changes can occur, or inappropriate emotional responses.

Depression: Depression is a very common emotional experience for brain injury survivors.

It is evident that there are numerous long-lasting effects of having a brain injury. So far, we have only discussed the cognitive changes a survivor would experience. Impact of a Brain Injury-Part 3 will discuss the physical changes a brain injury survivor might experience.

You should also remember that a concussion, even a mild one, is a type of head injury. Learn to protect your head and teach your friends, family and everyone you know the value in wearing a helmet and being safe.