Signs and Symptoms
Brain Injuries often create impairment or disability which can vary greatly in severity. In cases of serious brain injuries, the likelihood of areas with permanent disability is great, including neurocognitive deficits, delusions (often specifically monothematic delusions), speech or movement problems, and mental handicap. There will also be personality changes. The most severe cases result in coma or even persistent vegetative state. Even a mild incident can have long term effects or cause symptoms to appear years later.
Mental fatigue is a common debilitating experience and may not be linked by the patient to the original (minor) incident. Narcolepsy and sleep disorders are common misdiagnoses.
Brain injury whether from stroke, alcohol abuse, traumatic brain injury, or vitamin B deficiency can sometimes result in Korsakoff's Psychosis, where the individual engages in confabulations. Confabulations involve the inability to separate daydream memory from real memory and the filling in of memory lapses with daydreams. Like all other symptoms of brain injuries, Korsakoff's Psychosis is often mis-diagnosed, in this case as schizophrenia.
Read more about this topic: Brain Damage
Famous quotes containing the words signs and/or symptoms:
“A strong nation, like a strong person, can afford to be gentle, firm, thoughtful, and restrained. It can afford to extend a helping hand to others. It’s a weak nation, like a weak person, that must behave with bluster and boasting and rashness and other signs of insecurity.”
—Jimmy Carter (James Earl Carter, Jr.)
“Social movements are at once the symptoms and the instruments of progress. Ignore them and statesmanship is irrelevant; fail to use them and it is weak.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)