This is a part of podcast series from the Model Systems Knowledge Translation Center discussing emotional challenges after a traumatic burn injury (TBI). In this segment, Dr. Sougandhi Backhaus discusses the emotional impact of TBI. 

Traumatic brain injury affects both the person that had the injury as well as their family members as far as the person that actually had the injury. It can cause a number of emotional issues to start with the, it can cause things like depression, anxiety, manic episodes. It can cause significant irritability and even episodes of anger. And sometimes if a person has issues with mood before an injury happens, it can really exacerbate those issues causing them to be very dysfunctional, or it can maybe change their personality completely. And that becomes a significant disruption to the family as well as the person with the injury. There are other changes of course a person can have with traumatic brain injury, and those include more of the cognitive or mental changes. It can affect their ability to remember day-to-day information, to be able to attend and focus on tasks, to be able to communicate well with others. So when you put those worlds together, someone that's having difficulty remembering day-to-day information or communicating well and you add those changes in personality or problems controlling one's emotions, those two worlds can collide. And I like to say they have very synergistic, unfortunately, synergistic effects on each other and make their functioning a whole lot worse on top of any physical disabilities they might have from the injury. 

Visit https://msktc.org/tbi and get the answers you need from experts who conduct innovative and high-quality research, provide patient care, and work to improve the health and overall quality of life for people with traumatic brain injury. That’s https://msktc.org/tbi.