Domestic Violence And Traumatic Brain Injury: Article Analysis

Reading Cathy’s narrative allowed me to become familiar with TBI. As specified by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, traumatic brain injuries affect around 1.7 million individuals across all ages each year in the United States. According to the American Speech and Hearing Association (ASHA), a TBI can be either a closed or an open head injury. The severity of traumatic brain injury can be identified as falling under mild, moderate, or severe using the Glasgow Coma Scale as stated by Teasdale et al. (2014). In the story, Alan was assessed after being admitted to a Canadian hospital and scored a five on the scale, categorizing his brain injury as severe. Although, Alan’s low score meant that he would eventually awake from the coma, the consequences of his

Working with victims of domestic violence can be an extremely rewarding and fulfilling endeavor. One of the most crucial aspects for a paralegal working with victim of domestic violence is adequately engaging in the task of educating oneself to understand the commonalities of such victims and the ordeals that they have been through. Such clients are drastically different from other individuals who have suffered other physical and violent crimes. Understanding the background of someone who has lived through domestic violence is absolutely central to being able to provide adequate and sensitive legal care. Most victims of domestic violence are women (95%) though domestic violence can have an impact on ever age, class, race, ethnic, cultural or religious group (purplerainfoundation, 2012). "In the United States, nearly one in three adult women experience at least one physical assault by a partner during adulthood (American Psychological Association, Presidential Task Force on Violence and the Family 1996 Report)" (purplerainfoundation, 2012). These women are often terrified of their partner's temper, apologize when they are abused and often in the most extremely controlling and isolated environment where the abusive partner will control who the partner sees and where the partner goes outside of the home, jealous of outside relationships (purplerainfoundation, 2012). In these abusive relationships the women are hit,

Traumatic brain injury is any damage caused to the brain. Individuals with TBI may show aphasia-like symptoms, yet the characteristics of TBI include mostly cognitive processes deficits. Those characteristics include disrupt orientation, attention, memory, visual processing, and executive functions problems. Penitents with TBI experience a blackout that can last anywhere between a few minutes up to months and usually wake up confused and disoriented. They do not have any recollection of the events that occurred. In addition to the common characteristics mentioned earlier, TBI patients exhibit communication deficits that relate to poor cognitive functioning such as problems with word finding, grammatical, spelling, reading, and writing. The cause of TBI is very straightforward, unlike SLI or ASD. Any injury to the head, for example motor vehicle accidents, falls, blast trauma, and more, can cause a TBI. These in turn can cause damage to multiple areas of the brain and impair motor, speech, language, and cognitive functions as discussed. It is important to note that unlike ASD that usually

Brain trauma can cause a build-up of an abnormal type of a protein called tau, which slowly kills brain cells. Once started, these changes in the brain appear to continue to progress even after exposure to brain trauma has ended. Possible symptoms include memory loss, confusion, impaired judgment, paranoia, impulse control problems, aggression, depression, and eventually progressive dementia. CTE can worsen a person’s condition to the point that they may develop symptoms of many other diseases such as Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s disease. Symptoms can begin to appear months, years, or even decades after trauma has ended. Currently, CTE can only be diagnosed after death by brain tissue analysis. (“Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE).” Encyclopedia Britannica. Encyclopedia Britannica

Concussions and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder are highly dangerous but for different reasons. Concussions and PTSD are caused by different situations, affect the body in different ways, and have differing side effects. New evidence shows that physical contact to head (Concussions) can make people more likely to develop brain disorders like post Traumatic stress disorder. Posttraumatic stress disorder(PTSD) is a widely known and a very serious mental health problem that can be developed after witnessing or being involved in a stressful, life-threatening event. There are many different ways people can develop different types of PTSD, perhaps the most common cases are with our military men and women.Brutal and severe Deaths occur frequently in the military causing severe mental trauma. This trauma can lead to flashbacks, stress and many other negative brain functions.

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) has affected many people, but has hardly raised awareness; in fact according to Marcia Clemmitt “About 1.7 million Americans suffer a traumatic brain injury (TBI) every year…Yet, while they affect so many people, TBI has received little medical-research funding until brain injuries from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan … began to mount in recent years.”(Clemmitt) For such a long time many people were unaware of what traumatic brain injury even meant; Up until a numerous groups of veterans that came back home, from Afghanistan were found to suffer from traumatic brain injuries. Due to the discovery, the people that already suffered from traumatic brain injury

Traumatic Brain Injury also known as TBI. TBI is not the same as PTSD because

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a worldwide health problem that can lead to death or long-term disability even in people with mild TBI, especially in young population (Menon et al., 2010). More than 1.3 million visits to emergency department in the United States report for TBI (Faul et al., 2010). TBI can lead to sundry impairments and disabilities in physical , functional, cognitive, emotional and social realms which remarkably reduce health-related quality of life(HRQL) (Scholten et al., 2015: Andelic et al., 2009). TBI can be classified according to it severity into mild-moderate and sever TBI. Mild TBI (MTBI) also termed concussion score for over 77% of the entire reported TBI cases in the United States. About 40% of these cases are frequently

In their article, Depression and Cognitive Complaints Following Mild Traumatic Brain Injury, Dr. Silver, Dr. McAllister, and Dr. Arciniegas (2009) states that “Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a common occurrence with multiple possible neuropsychiatric sequelae, including problems with cognition, emotion, and behavior.” A traumatic brain injury is a physiological disruption of brain function due to the application of external physical force, including acceleration/deceleration forces. Neuropsychiatric sequelae, a term used to describe a cluster of post-TBI symptoms to include: cognitive, emotional, behavioral, physical, and psychosocial problems, is a significant source of disability in TBI survivors and their families. This review will examine symptoms of depression and cognitive impairment in individuals that have experienced a mild TBI, as well as the clinical approach to treating such people (Silver, McAllister, & Arciniegas, 2009).

She was evaluated at St. Luke’s Hospital and received 10 stitches on the back of her head. After the accident the patient reported intermittent headaches and dizziness, difficulty concentrating, insomnia, anxiety, impaired memory and reading comprehension, and distressing flashbacks of the incident. A neuropsychological evaluation found her symptoms to be in the severe range of the Beck Anxiety Inventory, and she was diagnosed with PTSD and Post-Concussion Syndrome. The evaluation found a direct causal link between her symptoms and the incident. The patient’s symptoms were consistent with mild TBI. However, the presence of PTSD (which shares symptoms like impaired attention and irritability) complicated a differential diagnosis (Brenner et al. 2009). A DTI study was ordered to assess possible

A traumatic brain injury also known as a TBI is an acquired injury to the brain caused by an external physical force resulting in total or partial functional disability or psychosocial impairment, or both, that adversely affects educational performance. The term applies to mild, moderate, or severe, open or closed head injuries resulting in impairments in one or more areas. (Florida Dept. of Education 2015) Although I have never met anyone with a brain injury, I wanted to learn more about it and what they go through to get a better perspective. One of my favorite movies is 50 First Dates with Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore. He meets a girl who had been in a car accident with her father years before and suffers from memory loss. Every day she re-lives her day the same as before and every night it’s almost like her short term memory has been erased. She only remembers what happened right before her accident. Until she meets a man who changes all of that. As the movie goes on, they fall in love and every day she wakes up to watch a video to show what her life is like now. During the movie she meets a man named “10 second Tom” who could only remember things for 10 seconds. It really opened my eyes to how blessed we are to remember the little things. A TBI can affect everyone differently. It can cause you to lose short term memory, long term, affect other parts of your body, and you might not

“Every year, in the United States there are over 3 million incidents of reported domestic violence. Every year, 4,000 victims of domestic violence are killed.” (Domestic Violence: Disturbing Facts about Domestic Violence). Domestic violence is a crime that is not just committed in the United States, but worldwide. This crime is committed every day, every hour, every minute, and every second. Anybody can be a victim or the abuser. This can happen to any child, man or woman. This is a horrific crime. Women are more likely to be the victim in domestic violence than men. “Forty-five percent of all violent attacks against female victims 12 years old and older by multiple

However, not all survivors are traumatized by their experience. In the article, it touched basis on the brain processes during trauma. Trauma has a major effect on the brain. The action of trauma on the brain is not completely understood, but there is knowledge regarding the brain’s role in processing traumatic experiences. There are two important parts of the brain that are involved when responding to danger. The “Doing” and the “Thinking” brain. The Doing brain, also called amygdala, this part of the brain is located in the limbic system that responds to threat, danger, and intense emotion. This is designed to act as a smoke alarm that goes off when your brain thinks danger. The Thinking brain, also known as the pre-frontal cortex, assist us with planning, problem-solve, and organize the world around us. It assist us with analyzing situations, and making thoughtful

Traumatic brain injury occurs when a person is hit in the head with a blunt force. This significant force to the head can happen playing recreational sports, on the playground, being in a car or motorcycle accident, falling down at home and your head impacting something, a blast or explosion. Traumatic brain injuries are also the leading cause of fatality rate and disability, especially in children, young adults and elderly. TBI is a devastating condition that affects millions of people nationwide, because it can affect the nervous system permanently, it also messes with the neurological, musculoskeletal, cognitive and much more. TBI force a family to deal with not just the physical disability, with the behavioral and emotional roller

The effects of interpersonal violence vary significantly from person to person and cannot be defined by pre-formulated assault syndromes or lists of expected symptoms. Instead, post-victimization consequences are the complex result of a wide number of trauma-specific, historic, victim, and social variables, ensuring that the clinical presentation of any given woman cannot be reviewed merely by the fact of her assault, an assault syndrome, or even by her DSM-5 diagnosis. “This is not to say that some effects are not relatively common among women who are victimized, such as depression, anxiety, or posttraumatic stress.” (Briere & Jordan, 2004, p. 1267) Even these, however, are not inevitable, nor are they specific to a given type of assault.