Monday, November 5, 2012
decision making after brain injury
After someone experiences a traumatic brain injury we often worry about how their motor skills will be affected or their speech. So when they physically are able to get around and interact with others with out a problem many people think the damage is limited or non existent. In the article about traumatic brain injury (TBI) and financial skills it explains how important it is to asses the patients ability to be able to do things as simple as understanding a bank statement, counting change, paying bills or balancing their check book. The article discusses how crucial it is to have someone else be responsible for this until the patient with the TBI can be fully assessed and they know what skills they have retained and what they will need to relearn. In an experiment that they did with the TBI patients they found that after 6 months they were able to improve in the area of basic skills in relation to financial skills but in order to do more complex financial skills they still appeared to struggle. The suggestion was that someone else still have "proxy" over things such as financial investments and complex balancing of accounts. It is unclear if long term the patients are able to take this responsibility back. The article said that the area of the brain that is responsible for this also seems to relate to driving and regulation of medicine so these might be other areas that will require a caregiver to assist.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
so what i understand is that people with TBI can regain some of the skills or knowledge. of course with a good rehabilitation and treatments that could be possible.
ReplyDeleteSo when I clicked on your article it deleted what I wrote in response to your blog. -_- .... So let me try to remember what I typed prior to reading the article.. Oh, it was an eye opener to read about traumatic brain injury effecting something other than motor or speaking skills. When I think of an injury I do not think of having a hard time computing financial things. But I am glad that there are ways to improve the damage that is done to the brain. However, six months is a long time to recover. Then again there are other things that take much longer so I guess half a year is not that bad. Especially if you are seeing improvements to such a bad injury.
ReplyDeleteVery interesting, but just out of curiosity would this be tied to decision making when someone with brain damage can’t tell from wrong and right, so they end up making decision which might cost all their money for example like in gambling, or taking other risky behaviors which might affect others.
ReplyDelete