In concussion's wake, sadness and anxiety thrive

It is always amazing to me to see how far science has come since the first time I faced death, it was at the age of 4 and it was with what they call traumatic brain injury now. I was on a slide at a drive-in movie. I slipped away from my older brothers and headed right for the "big kids" slide I was not supposed to be on without one of them with me. When I got to the top, I was frightened and as I looked down, trying to find the nerve to push, a kid behind me decided to do it for me. Too much strength on one side, he ended up pushing me over the side. Head first onto concrete did not have a pleasant outcome. I passed out, my scull was cracked and I had a concussion. Back then the tech reading the X-Ray read it wrong and I was sent home. It was not until the next day when my eyelid swelled shut that my parents had their first clue how lucky I was to still be alive. We took a trip to the children's hospital where another X-Ray showed the damage and I was admitted for a week for observation.

Needless to say my parents always used that injury to explain some of the odd things I did and how I had a hard time with certain things but ended up excelling at things girls just were not supposed to be good at. I could take apart anything and put it back together but I couldn't learn how to spell right. I had a speech problem I had to see a therapist for and I had a lot of headaches. After it happened most of what followed was later forgotten about because I healed and was able to function. To this day I wonder how much of what became a part of me was due to this one horrible night in my life when I was so young.

Now there are so many advances and scientist understand a lot more than even they thought they would learn about the brain.

In concussion's wake, sadness and anxiety thrive

May 18, 2010 | 11:09 am
In the year following a traumatic brain injury, roughly half of survivors likely experience a bout of clinical depression -- a rate almost eight times higher than that found in the general population, says a study published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. And those whose head trauma was followed by depression reported significantly more pain, greater mobility problems and more difficulty carrying out their usual responsibilities than those who were not plagued by post-injury depression.

Traumatic brain injury, or TBI, is sometimes called concussion. Often called the "silent epidemic," it affects some 1.5 million Americans yearly. Its symptoms are often subtle -- including personality changes, problems of memory and concentration, headaches and mood disturbances. While for most, the effects of a head trauma will clear within a year, many have more lasting effects. For at least 80,000 people a year, major disability will follow.

The 559 participants in this study had all come to a trauma center in the Seattle area with a head injury, signs of brain trauma that could be detected by a CT scan, and at least a few complications -- including loss of consciousness, disorientation or other factors that qualified them as scoring at most a 13 on the 15-point Glasgow Coma scale. Over the next six months, and then again at eight, 10 and 12 months after the participant's injury, researchers conducted a detailed telephone interview to gauge his or her mood state and ability to function. The result, said the researchers, was likely to yield a conservative picture of how many suffered from depression.
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