Peter Sedesse a writer on Helum.com has written some good informative pieces on head injuries and concussions. Here are the highlights of his most recent “How emotional functioning can be impacted by traumatic brain injury”;
One of the most confusing issues when dealing with traumatic brain injuries is the effect that it has on the individual’s personality and emotions…
This type of injury is often difficult to diagnose because in most situations, the medical staff will not have a great familiarity of the individual’s personality before the accident. For instance, and individual may seem like a very shy person to the medical staff, but they have no way of knowing that the person was a lively extrovert before the accident. In many situations, it is up to family members and other loved ones to point out the personality changes…
He continues about how withdrawal from family and friends is very common, due to the patient being confused, the other parts of their support group not understanding what is going on, and how the patient cannot explain what is going on. This can lead to a much more dangerous situation.
The most dangerous result of personality changes caused by traumatic brain injury is depression. The victim will sometimes feel like their friends and family don’t really know them anymore, which causes further isolation, which leads to depression. This is compounded by the fact that the personality change may lead to divorce, unemployment and the loss of any close relationships.
As a person that has battled this terrible condition there are some things that we all must agree on. When dealing with a concussion, either as a health care professional or someone close to the individual we should be on the look out for personality changes and report them right away. Hiding the problem, as I did, makes it much worse and there are people out there than want to help. Don’t be ashamed of this “diagnosis” as a result of a head injury, rather embrace it work with it and get better.
The Concussion Blog 