Review written by Delaney Collins
Senior Brain Injury Case Manager & Safeguarding Lead
My mother acquired a brain injury as a Canadian veteran overseas when I was 16 years old. This has massively fuelled my passion for working with clients with traumatic brain injuries and their families.
I have first-hand experience of what it is like to have a family member transformed by this injury. Many of the themes raised in this article are things that my family and I navigated as I finished high school.
I can remember my mother, post-injury and pre-diagnosis, struggling with suicidal ideation, changes in her personality, making mean comments that felt like they came out of nowhere, not able to remember anything, etc. etc. I can remember the confusion of not understanding why this was happening, why my mother was suddenly a different person. My mother came home able to walk and talk. Because the changes were invisible, professionals didn’t know what to do with her, or where to look next. My mother knew there was something wrong, we as her family knew there was something wrong, and no one seemed to have answers for us (or if they did, they weren’t shared with us).
Like many of the respondents in this survey, we had few supports, a lack of resources specializing in brain injury, and nothing specifically for the family. My relationship with my mother is permanently changed, and while she has been able to find a high level of independence, the dynamic of mother caring for child is inherently altered.
While it is incredibly validating to read this article and see that this is a shared experience, that so many individuals and families with brain injuries have had to steer these same paths, it is also heart-wrenching. Adapting to the changes caused by a brain injury is already too much for any family to have to go through, and yet so many families have to do so. Having to also contend with poor services, lack of information and understanding, feeling excluded from the rehabilitation plan, or like you’re the only person advocating for what’s needed, is indefensible.
I am so grateful to work with Head First, to have the opportunity to stand with families of brain injuries, and to be able to give others a better experience, better support, than what my family had. Rehabilitation from brain injury is a family experience and cannot be treated as an individual silo. The loss and transformation felt is universal, and impacts on the injured person, their parents, partners, children, siblings, friends, and extended family members.
Thank you to Mark Holloway and Ross Tasker, for undertaking this research and shining a light on the experiences of families.
Read the full article here: https://journal.ilpnetwork.org/articles/10.31389/jltc.20
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