Austin Traumatic Brain Injury Lawyers

TBIs Affect Many, Many People

Nationally, TBIs causes some 50,000 deaths every year. Another 300,000 victims suffer TBIs severe enough that they are hospitalized. Roughly 80,000 of those victims are left with disabilities—physical, intellectual, emotional, behavioral—that remain for the duration of their lives.

TBI victims may live many years after the injury, of course, and the total number of TBI victims in our country is much higher than most people know: several million Americans currently live with a TBI-related disability.

Causes of TBIs

Any kind of accident that involves physical impact to the head or even a whipping motion of the head that causes the brain to move within the skull can result in a TBI. More than half of all TBIs occur in auto accidents. Roughly another quarter results from the victim falling.

The Consequences of a Brain Injury

All human behaviors and every physical action require that some portion of the brain function properly. There is simply no way to exaggerate how devastatingly serious TBIs can be for victims and their families. Some functions may be recovered while others are lost or impaired forever. Rehabilitation programs that enhance recovery of lost functions are costly and require deep commitments from both the victim and caregivers.

The disruption of life is severe enough that psychological counseling is often needed by both victims and family members, especially those most involved in caring for the victim.

Medical and technological advances have produced many mechanical and electronic aids that can substitute for lost functions, all of which are expensive and require that the victim learn how to use them.

Physical Consequences

The part of the brain that is damaged and the severity of the damage determine which physical functions are affected.

Functions that may be affected include:

Intellectual & Psychological Consequences

TBIs may dramatically affect the “ability to think” in the broadest sense. Memory is often affected, as are the abilities to focus and to string ideas together coherently. Even logical and coherent thoughts may take longer to form than before the injury. Learning new ideas and tasks may be difficult or even impossible. All of these problems are obstacles to fundamental human activity like socializing, working, and performing basic tasks from dressing to shopping.

TBIs often produce basic personality changes, which complicates recovery and puts significant stress on the victim’s personal relationships, causing conflict with family and caregivers.

TBIs in Children

After a TBI, children may have problems learning, both in an academic sense and in the sense of discovering how to socialize and to form emotional attachments. Adult TBI victims who once had these skills may be better equipped to overcome the impairments than children who never had the skills at all.

It’s also harder to assess the damages caused by a TBI in a child. Many of the symptoms of TBI—restlessness, impaired learning, and the like—may also be caused by other problems that produce “developmental delay” or by other disorders, like attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).