Technorati Tags: criminal defense, TBI
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Traumatic Brain Injury
One of the unintended side effects of the Iraq war is that many of our healthiest young men and women are coming home with traumatic brain injuries. Traumatic brain injury, or TBI, has been called the signature wound of the Iraq war.
When I learned (from hanging out with lawyers who represent injured people) about the devastating personality changes that can result from TBI, I realized that in the next 10 or 20 years we are going to see a lot of Iraq War veterans entangled in the criminal justice system because of TBI and PTSD. So I was glad to see that the Centers for Disease Control have recognize the problem and published a brochure introducing the problem: CDC brochure on TBI.
I'll be blogging more on TBI in the criminal justice system.
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2 comments:
In 2003 my dad had a brain aneurysm rupture. He died 8 weeks later, but in that 8 weeks he was in a coma, I read a lot about people in his situation. Often those people woke up with completely opposite personalities from their original personality. Nice, kind, gentle people would become people who would say and do terrible things, or even become violent. It was really heartbreaking to read these stories by people who had felt that eve thoug their father/mother/sister etc., had woken up, it was worse than if they had died. If I had been given that choice with my dad, I'm not sure what I would have chosen. I'm not too sure him waking up with a different personality would have been worse than watching him take his final breath and feeling his heartbeat slowly weaken until it wasn't there.
Todd,
I'm sorry you lost your dad.
I understand that the person whose personality has changed is often not aware of it. It must seem to him as though the rest of the world has changed.
Mark.
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