Activities for the Family Caregiver ��� Traumatic Brain Injury: How to Engage / How to Live

By Scott Silknitter, Heather McKay and Lisa Gonzalez

From the groundbreaking series written specifically for family caregivers, “Activities for the Family Caregiver – Traumatic Brain Injury: How to Engage / How to Live” offers information and insight to enhance quality of life through improved social interactions as well as activities of daily living, safety and general caregiver information. Learn new communications and activities strategies to improve time spent with your loved one. Gain new insight as you learn the “how to’s,” “why's,” and techniques of activities – daily living and leisure. Discover how to turn daily activities and routines into opportunities to start some joy.

Written by nationally-recognized leaders in activities for those with cognitive disabilities, “Activities for the Family Caregiver – Traumatic Brain Injury: How to Engage / How to Live” provides much-needed information to address the unique social needs of those with traumatic brain injury and those who care for them.

“Activities for the Family Caregiver – Traumatic Brain Injury: How to Engage / How to Live” is just one book in a series of books from R.O.S. Therapy Systems. Whether it is Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, stroke, Huntington’s or some other issue, R.O.S. is here to help improve quality of life for not only the patient but also the caregiver. The Activities for the Family Caregiver book series embodies the mission of R.O.S. Therapy Systems: To improve quality of life for seniors and their caregivers through activities and education. Each book in the series was written by industry experts related to the specific topic covered and is filled with valuable information and common sense tips to help families and caregivers engage their loved one in meaningful activities.

R.O.S. Therapy Systems was founded by inventor, author and speaker Scott Silknitter of Greensboro, NC, in 2010 as a project to help his mother and father in a 25-year battle with Parkinson’s disease and dementia. For more information about Scott or the R.O.S. family of companies, please visit www.ROSTherapySystems.com or contact us at 888-352-9788.

• Language: English
• Publisher: eBookPartnership
• Release date: Jun 16, 2015
• ISBN: 9781943285099

Book preview

Authors

Chapter 1

Traumatic Brain Injury Overview

A Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) happens when someone’s head is severely hit or shaken, or when an object penetrates the brain and disrupts the normal functioning of the brain. In an uninjured brain, the different areas of the brain use connections (called axons) to communicate with one another. When a blow or jolt causes shearing or bruising of the brain, a loss of these connections often occurs. The microscopic damage to these connections can disrupt brain function. Each year, a reported 1.7 million individuals sustain a TBI in the US, according to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

Falls are the leading causes of TBIs (35–40 percent), primarily for those aged 0 to 14 and 65 and older. From 14–20 percent of TBIs are caused by motor vehicle accidents, while assaults and struck by/against situations contribute to another 26 percent of the TBI causes.

TBI is a leading cause of disability for young people—and particularly men. Of the 70 percent of TBIs involving young people between 16 to 24 years of age, two thirds will be male. For every severe TBI, there are 10 mild brain injuries. However, the word mild doesn’t mean there aren’t serious concerns that can affect the person with the injury, their friends, and their family.

The majority of TBIs occur in that prime productive stage of life where identities, roles, and often socialization center around the workplace. For that reason, there are often major changes and implications that involve a person’s security, esteem, relatedness, and sense of purpose.

TBIs can range in severity from a mild concussion that may heal without medical treatment to severe injuries that require surgery and years of rehabilitation. While severe TBIs may be easy to detect, because a person’s head is noticeably injured or the person is in a coma, mild concussions are often overlooked—and yet can have serious consequences.

Concussions are a serious problem, accounting for about 90 percent of TBIs and creating significant difficulties for the injured people and their families. Furthermore, problems from multiple brain injuries add up over time. People who suffered even a mild TBI are at risk for further brain trauma and will take longer to recover from future head injuries.

You may have heard about the risk of an injured football player heading back to the field before fully recovering from a concussion. The same applies with blast exposures and some military injuries. For example, many warriors who are nearby an explosion or who suffer a direct hit with minimal physical damage end up redeployed—only to suffer additional blast injury, which can compound the original damage.

Those with a concussion may look the same after the injury, walk and talk with no problem, and even report that they feel fine—when, in fact, they’ve suffered a TBI. Symptoms of a concussion—such as headache, dizziness, nausea, fatigue, and irritability—are symptoms that we’ve all had at some time in our lives, often unrelated to a brain injury. It’s therefore easy to mistake those signs for something else or accidentally brush those complaints aside. Other symptoms can last for years—such as seizures, slurred speech, memory loss, lack of attention, and changes in vision or personality—and can get worse over time if left untreated. Often, these symptoms are subtle and might not affect functional abilities for several months.

Early Detection

It’s important to diagnose and treat the person with a TBI as quickly as possible to improve long-term outcomes as well as decrease the risk of additional injuries.

Research in early detection and treatment is emerging to meet the growing needs of veterans who experience TBIs. According to a Rand study in 2008, one in five veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan has experienced a traumatic brain injury. The dramatic increase in TBI cases, up from previous wars, is attributed to more powerful munitions and improved body armor and protective gear. Service members are now surviving physical injuries that would have been fatal before today’s protective equipment and specialized uniforms.

Thanks to the Brain Trauma Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to improving the outcomes for people with TBI, in partnership with US Department of Defense and Veterans Affairs, early detection and treatment protocols are improving for all military and civilian patients. For example, Dr. Jamshid Ghajar, president and founder of Brain Trauma Foundation (BTF), has invented several neurosurgical devices that have been adopted worldwide—the latest of which is a simple test of a person’s eye movements to detect brain injury.

In this test, patients are asked to watch a small dot of light as it moves in a predictable pattern, such as a circle, while their eye movements are monitored. Patients with normal brain function can predict the movement of the dot and are able to track the moving dot with ease. The task is much more difficult for patient with TBIs, so their eyes track in a wobbly pattern. The more severe the brain injury, the more the eyes appear wobbly, and the harder it is for the