Acknowledging Brain Injury Awareness Month

Brain Injury Awareness Month in Canada is an initiative observed annually throughout the month of June aimed at raising public awareness about brain injuries. According to Brain Injury Canada, there are 165,000 serious traumatic brain injuries per year, meaning 452 Canadians suffer a moderate-to-severe traumatic brain injury every day. This campaign seeks to promote the life-changing impacts of an acquired brain injury and educate on the importance of prevention, treatment, and support.

To acknowledge this significant month, we’re here to share some information about traumatic brain injuries and how we can help support injured parties and their families on the path to rehabilitation, recovery, and potential brain injury compensation.

Traumatic acquired brain injuries occur when a sudden external force or impact causes damage to the brain. One of the leading causes of TBIs is motor vehicle accidents. Car, motorcycle, bicycle, and pedestrian accidents can all result in TBIs due to the forceful impact during a collision that causes the brain to collide with the skull.



Other common causes of these acquired injuries are slip-and-fall accidents, assaults and violence, sports and recreational injuries, and medical malpractice instances.

The effects of a traumatic brain injury can vary widely, depending on the location and severity of the injury. Typically, they fall within these four categories:

Cognitive

Cognitive impairments can have long-lasting effects and impact an individual’s ability to think, communicate, and make decisions. This includes challenges with concentration, judgment, self-awareness, and memory.

Behavioural

Behavioural changes that may be a symptom of a TBI involve how someone acts or makes decisions following the injury. This is often demonstrated through risky, impulsive behaviour that may have dangerous outcomes, as well as difficulty adjusting in social settings.

Emotional

How someone processes emotions after a TBI can change, potentially resulting in depression, anxiety, and/or anger. These emotions are often out of character and can appear in unpredictable outbursts.

Physical

The physical effects of a TBI are those that affect mobility, headaches, pain, fatigue, and other sensory processing issues.

Even mild traumatic brain injury cases are extremely important to address right away. Sometimes individuals suffer the effects of a head injury without even knowing it! Although an injury may not be overtly obvious, the victim of a minor head injury may experience emotional changes (being quick to anger or cry), word retrieval issues, poor attention or concentration, memory issues, and many other subtle symptoms. People often aren’t the same after serious (or even minor) head injuries.

If you or a family member has suffered a brain injury as the result of a car accident that is not the fault of the brain injury victim, be sure to seek good legal advice. Experienced lawyers, like those here at Robinson LLP, will ask the right questions and help get you an appropriate diagnosis and evaluation. Understanding the process of a brain injury claim goes a long way toward helping both the victim and their family.

Rehabilitation after a brain injury is a long-term and challenging process, and we enlist a team of medical experts and professionals to help assess the situation pre- and post-accident. With access to surgeons, neurologists, neuropsychologists, occupational therapists, psychiatrists, economists, vocational consultants, and so many more, we take the stress of litigation out of the mix so you can solely focus on recovering from your pain and suffering.

Read our blog article, “How Personal Injury Lawyers Build Your Case Following a Brain Injury”, for more specifics on what the process of representing brain-injured victims looks like.

Brain injuries can affect anyone at any time and can have a devastating impact on both the injured parties and their families. Awareness and public education go a long way in helping to prevent the life-altering effects of a traumatic brain injury, and we are happy to support Brain Injury Canada and their Brain Injury Awareness Month campaign. Robinson LLP’s brain injury lawyers understand the subtleties of brain injuries. Contact us for a free consultation, and we will help you do the same.