Poll Curious About Concussions / TBIs

[Friday]

I know head injuries are common with many, if not most, of the traumas that can cause PTSD (as well as simply a byproduct of living life)… I’m just curious how many of us have had the ole bell rung at least once, if not many times.

 

[enough]

yes, and one good shot during the time i was enduring the worst of the traumas, worst because i was young and stuck with my parents, and a particularly hard to deal with TBI because i was dealing with a total forced change to my entire lifestyle and the recovery time was predominantly during a recovery from a fractured vertebrae C3 that involved heavy sedation. I didn’t have much that i could point to and say “this was different after i banged my head” because EVERYTHING was different pretty much because my parents wanted it that way. I could have started speaking at a 4 yr old vocabulary level and they would have figured it was the work of the devil or their god, whatever suited the book they were reading that week. It was a TBI, i know that now.

 

[Weemie]

I voted for many times because I have had multiple head injuries that have resulted in a loss of consciousness, which is the primary diagnostic criteria of a concussion. But I have only one "major" TBI, which was when I was picked up by my shoulders and my head was smashed repeatedly into a wooden head-board by an angry adult. (At least, I think that is where it is from.) I had a fairly catastrophic level of skills loss and I had to re-learn how to do a lot of basic navigation skills.

When they did my first psych ed the guy wrote that he "does not know how [deadname] participates in the daily tasks of living" as I could not find my way around my own apartment. Due to CVI (cortical visual impairment) and visual agnosia. But that's because it was an aq-TBI and not congenital; they believed I was learning disabled but could not understand why I was so suddenly and rapidly decompensating. Things just disappear from my visual field without warning. Trail making results were nonsensical.

A whole bunch of it did not make any sense at all. (Because I did not agree to be open about being physically abused.) Eventually, at like 25, I had confirmation of TBI. The ADHD and RAD && ASPD traits and rage issues aside, it's probable that I've had multiple concussions & perhaps even multiple brain injuries; if not from physical violence, from using hard drugs at a young age (starting on amphetamines from about age 7, graduating to crack cocaine about a year or two later).

Having, oh, five or six different points of failure where impulse control is concerned? I'm very fortunate to be alive right now.

 

[Roland]

This is a good poll, mental health practitioners have to rule out brain damage before diagnosing with mental illness. It's an interesting idea. I haven't had any major head injuries, only very minor ones, so I voted no. One guy I know has had both head injuries and brain surgery and it's very apparent how much that's affected him cognitively.

 

[Muttly]

I checked yes, at least once because to my memory only one was confirmed.

 

[Freida]

File this under maybe -- but my t asked me once if I thought repeated suffocation could lead to a brain injury.
Didn't want to think about, but it's a good question about how brain cells die

 

[Weemie]

repeated suffocation could lead to a brain injury.

They can, it's called hypoxic brain injury. This is the kind of brain injury that usually leaves people "brain dead" or PVS, or minimally conscious. So it can be very severe.

But when we think of "injury" hypoxia isn't as intuitive, but it still "counts." It's sort of the same thing as whether or not saturating your brain in poisonous chemicals at age 8 is enough to cause "brain injury." If not injury, then certainly there are changes in the way that the brain activates, the areas that light up during tasks, and areas that should be lighting up but are much darker, or areas that shouldn't be involved at all which are involved.

So, like, is a child with a congenital lack of activation in the medial prefrontal cortex, "brain injured?" Neurodivergent? There's nothing wrong with them and they are just "bad people?" We would probably not consign them to the same realm as a TBI patient who throws an object or screams in anger - the MPFC deactivated child would instead be consigned as "fully cognizant" of their actions and "non-personality disordered."

But yet the clinical relevance remains - there is a distinction and that has real-world impacts on their behavior. (Interestingly enough, the overlap of how ADHD brains process oxytocin and dopamine shouldn't be ignored, either.) So how much of this is "brain injury" versus neurodivergence versus "neural activation discrepancy" or post-concussion syndrome, blast/shock injuries, intermittent explosive disorder, fetal-alcohol syndrome, drug addiction...

For ex I just learned recently that high doses (well beyond therapeutic) of the medication I actually take to regulate my sensory input (dextromethorphan, the active ingredient in newly-approved Auvelity) is associated with structural changes of the occipital lobe. (Olney's lesions were never, ever proven to occur in humans, but these results are more concrete.) So not only do I have a CVI from physical damage (force, mass and velocity) but there is the potential that these symptoms are made worse by my excessive use of this substance in childhood.

Is that a TBI? TBI-adjacent? Compounding damage?

As we think about what a brain injury is? That is, being caused by physical forces acting in nature? No, since the equation of force and velocity is not present in the same manner (that is, you are not having your head smashed in). But like, you can get brain injury from surgery. You can get brain injury from drug overdose. (Most of that again is hTBI). And you can definitely get it from being deprived of oxygen. The reason I bring all this other stuff up is because it's fairly ubiquitous that PTSD and TBI go together, but what is less commonly discussed is the intersection of neurodivergence and PTSD relative to attachment and goal/reward-seeking.

(So ex: we know that PTSD has higher rates of substance abuse - is that because of an existential cause, like "their pain is so great they must use substances to cope" or is it relative to the changes in the structures of how they process dopamine and oxytocin, which are regulatory chemicals in sensory input && human bonding? Or, more likely: both. -> worth noting I have both SUD, ADHD, TBI, RAD and PTSD. So uhhhhh my brain? Be borked.

So how much is one thing impacted by the other? Who rightly knows.)

 

[whiteraven]

Yep. I have fallen a number of times and had diagnosed concussions, and the first grand mal I had also resulted in one.

 

[DharmaGirl]

I rode jumpers in my youth when I wasn't falling off. I've had several concussions. One had me puking all night and the pain was atrocious but I couldn't wake up enough to drive to the hospital.

 

[Freddyt]

Yeah, back in the '60s 70's if you got abck up - you were good. I may have had one after the hockey accident. Don't remember exactly bur was in the hospital anyway so....

Then playing sports and being one eyed - I took plenty of blows to the head. Guessing I had more then a couple.

 

[Freida]

oh ya -- totally forgot falling off of horses more times than I can count!

 

[No More]

Yes multiple, but it’s been through sport. I had a very bad one while I was on my own, so no idea how long I was out for. Forgot how to drive, issues with vision and coordination for months afterwards, I now have chronic migraine etc etc
Plenty where I’ve been out and then throwing up afterwards.

I absolutely believe proper concussions really affect you mentally. There’s a lot more research and temporary sport bans going on now as it’s becoming clear how much they damage people.