Deficits That May Result From Brain Injury

  • Debilitating fatigue
  • Sleep dysfunction, i.e., insomnia, day and night confusion
  • Lack of stamina
  • Problems planning, organizing, and initiating tasks
  • Difficulties with multi-tasking and sequencing
  • Need for structure and direction to accomplish tasks
  • Poor concentration, attention, and memory
  • Problems retrieving information from memory
  • Intelligence remains intact, but processing new information is slow
  • Problems with pacing activities
  • Difficulty with judgment and decision making
  • Perseverance, i.e., the mind becoming stuck on one issue
  • Distractibility, confusion
  • Irritability
  • Impulsivity
  • Difficulty dealing with change
  • Inability to cue, leading to socially inappropriate behavior
  • Isolating self as feeling different, and therefore treated differently
  • Difficulty  “keeping up” in social situations
  • Poor coping strategies that impact interpersonal and vocational efforts
  • Vertigo (dizziness), lightheaded feeling
  • Tinnitus (ringing in the ears)
  • Light or sound sensitivity
  • Smell and taste alterations
  • Visual, speech, and hearing disturbances
  • Stress related disorders; depression, frustration
  • Emotional lability, i.e., crying for no apparent reason, emotional outbursts
  • Compulsive talkativeness
  • Balance and co-ordination problems (motor co-ordination)
  • Personality change
  • Chronic pain, including headache
  • Inability to return to work, or if able, at a reduced capacity
  • Possible misdiagnosis as, for example, psychiatric illness or malingering

Each head injury is different.  A person with neurological dysfunction may experience any combination of symptoms or none at all.  Severity of symptoms varies with each individual and may change over time.