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Substantial Lifelong Consequences
Things that once were easy and familiar become strange and difficult. Intensive mental effort is usually required to do things that required little or no effort before this kind of injury. Work and school, personal and family life often suffers too. Typically, children become unmanageable, grades drop, personalities change and they regress to an earlier developmental stage.
In adults, deadlines are missed, jobs are lost, savings dwindle and nerves fray. Behaviour regresses and becomes unpredictable, unreliable, frequently inappropriate, and sometimes violent, role reversals are common. While only one family member may have sustained this the entire family suffers from its massive intrusion
Recognising the Problem
Often, the effects of minor to moderate brain injuries are not immediately apparent. Many months may go by before brain injury changes become apparent. Even then, special training and expertise are required to properly diagnose such impairments. Such fields of specialisation are known as neuro-psychology and neuro-psychiatry.
Recognising such problems is made even more difficult by perceptual and expressive impairments caused by this. Brain injury causes diminished self-awareness that interferes with the ability to recognise changes in the self. It also causes mental confusion and a sense of uncertainty about experiences. Difficulties finding familiar words to communicate thoughts and desires hinder communication and fuels frustration. Many individuals do not report such symptoms out of fear of being thought of as mentally unsound. Others are shamed by such symptoms in themselves.
Additionally, the very nature of brain injury interferes with the ability to recognise the problem. Frequently, brain injury causes memory impairments and expressive disorders. In real terms, this means that even when the memory survives the words might become elusive. Such impairments can hamper the ability to provide the doctor an accurate symptom picture.
Even minor head injury, also known as concussion, can cause substantial difficulties or impairments that can last a lifetime. Whiplash too, can result in the same difficulties as head injury. Rehabilitation, however many individuals are released from treatment without referrals to brain injury rehabilitation, or guidance of any sort can help such impairments.