"Minor" brain injuries often lead to social, academic & economic failure, homelessness, alcoholism & drug addiction
Brain injuries that are referred to as "mild" or "minor" are often actually the underlying cause of social, academic, economic and personal failures. An article by Thomas M. Burton in today's Wall Street Journal reports on current research on the role of such head traumas in causing a variety of ills ranging from learning disabilities to chronic homelessness and alcoholism. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates 5.3 million Americans suffer from mental or physical disability that is due to brain injury. However, the CDC admits an undercount as its figures to not include include people who sought no treatment for a severe blow to the head or who were sent home from a doctor's office or emergency room with little treatment.
According to Wayne A. Gordon, director of the Brain Injury Research Center at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, "Unidentified traumatic brain injury is an unrecognized major source of social and vocational failure." Research by his team has consistently found high rates of "hidden" head trauma when screening various populations in New York schools, addiction programs and the general population.
The Wall Street Journal article tells the story of a college instructor who over the course of a year after a "minor" head injury lost her ability to read, keep her home orderly and maintain friendships. She tried to continue teaching but found bright lights and a hectic environment overwhelming, and soon lost her job. She fell behind on paying bills and housekeeping, went to work in a less demanding field, withdrew socially, and wanted to die. However, she never related the meltdown in her life to the blow on the head until contacted by a followup research project at Mount Sinai Hospital. Eight years after her injury she struggled to complete an n attention and memory rehabilitation program. Now she is training to become a counselor.
A study of homeless men in New York revealed that 82% had a history of head trauma, many of them involving parental abuse in childhood. The article does not break out the percentage that had traumatic brain injury in other types of accidents or in military service.
A study of people involved in alcohol and drug abuse found that 54% of them had a history of head trauma.
In my extended family and in my law practice, I have often seen the subtle and insidious effects of so-called "minor" brain injury in the lives of people who kept struggling through a morass of confusion for decades. In representing people with brain injuries, it is essential to understand these problems and know how to communicate them to judges and juries.
The Shigley Law Firm represents plaintiffs in wrongful death and catastrophic injury (including spinal cord and brain injuries) in cases statewide in Georgia, and in other states subject to the multijurisdictional practice and pro hac vice rules in each state. Ken Shigley was designated as a "SuperLawyer" in Atlanta Magazine and one of the "Legal Elite" in Georgia Trend Magazine. He is a Certified Civil Trial Advocate of the National Board of Trial Advocacy, and has been chair of both the Southeastern Motor Carrier Liability Institute and the Georgia Insurance Law Institute. He particularly focuses on cases arising from truck and bus accidents and defectively manufactured products. Click here for a free consultationn with no obligation.
