Class Action and Personal Injury BLOG

When are TBI Patients Most Susceptible to Depression?

May 18th, 2012

Doctors published a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), which could have a profound effect on war veterans, a large population of traumatic brain injury (TBI) patients. A TBI patient with a major depressive disorder (MDD) is at a high risk of suicide, according to the study. Moreover, patients who experience MDD in addition to TBI will have significantly higher medical expenses for their treatment. However, doctors do not know of any reliable predictors of MDD in TBI patients. The researchers at the University of Washington School of Medicine, Seattle, looked at 559 adults with mild to severe TBI. Their results showed that in the first year after TBI, 297 patients suffered from a major depressive disorder (MDD). The TBI patients studied were mostly male who suffered head trauma in car crashes. Researchers noted that TBI patients have a risk of MDD throughout the first year…
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Does TBI Lead to Depression?

May 16th, 2012

Researchers have long suspected that there is a link between traumatic brain injury (TBI) and depression. Now, doctors at the National Center for Medical Rehabilitation Research (NCMRR) are studying that potential link. Researchers hope to build upon smaller scale research, which suggests that TBI patients have increased rates of aggression and anxiety, in addition to more suicide attempts. So far, the NCMRR study show that rates of depression are significantly higher among those who have experienced TBI than among those who have not experienced TBI or the general population. This study, the first large-scale study of closely and routinely followed TBI patients, showed that the rate of depression among TBI survivors was nearly 8 times that of the general population. In the study, 53.1 percent of the participants reported depressions, compared to 6.7 percent in the general population. Of note in the study is that doctors previously thought that TBI…
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Did Head Trauma Cause NFL Player’s Suicide?

May 14th, 2012

Former NFL player Junior Seau took his own life last month, and many suspect that head trauma caused the depression that led to his suicide. Seau’s suicide is not the first of its kind. Last year, another former NFL player named Dave Duerson committed suicide. Doctors examined Duerson’s brain and found that he suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy, which is severe head trauma. Twenty more former NFL players also suffer from the same condition. Doctors do not know at this point if Seau suffered from the condition, but investigators suspect that Seau shot himself in the chest in order to preserve his brain for study. The link between traumatic brain injury (TBI) and depression has been in the news for a while, but Seau’s recent suicide added even more urgency to the issue for athletes and non-athletes. Experts suspect that a career of repeated hits to the head caused head…
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