Brain Injury Disorders

A brain injury can be caused by trauma from the outside, or come from an event from within the brain.

There are many ways in which the brain can be injured from the outside, such as falls, accidents, or even deliberate violence. Traumatic brain injuries are graded from mild to severe, based on a number of injury characteristics.

Non-traumatic brain injuries can happen suddenly, for example a haemorrhage when an undiagnosed aneurysm bursts, or they can be the end result of processes such as ageing and underlying conditions such as high blood pressure and diabetes mellitus, which increase cerebrovascular risk.

Some brain injuries take place slowly over time, from the effects of tumours and other space-occupying lesions, such as hydrocephalus.

Brain injury symptoms are unique to the way the injury happened, where in the brain and to whom. Recovery is often incomplete and often the problems most difficult to manage are psychiatric complications such as personality change, emotional disorders, aggression, fatigue, anxiety and psychosis. Cognitive function is almost always affected.

A careful and thorough assessment by an experienced neuropsychiatrist is vital as part of multi-disciplinary care, often with other healthcare professionals such as speech and language therapists, physiotherapists and occupational therapists.

Voluntary organisations such as Headway https://www.headway.org.uk/ are invaluable sources of help, information and support, as well as the services of a brain injury case manager.