According to the Defense and Veterans Brain Injury Center (DVBIC), more than 380,000 active duty Service members received a first-time TBI diagnosis between 2000 and the first quarter of 2018. Embedded in that large number are not only the experiences of the Service members themselves, but also their family members and caregivers whose own lives are often affected by a TBI diagnosis for their loved one.
Since 2001, more than 2.6 million U.S. military personnel have been deployed in support of Operations Enduring Freedom, Iraqi Freedom, and New Dawn. Between 2001 and 2016, more than 350,000 cases of traumatic brain injury (TBI) have been diagnosed in active duty Service members, most of which are concussive TBI (cTBI), also known as mild TBI.
A U.S. Veteran, I’ll call him Steve, walked into my office following his third and final military deployment. He was referred to me for an evaluation of a potential traumatic brain injury (TBI). As a member of an artillery unit, traveling across Iraq in convoys, Steve, who is a composite, not an actual person, witnessed many deaths and injuries; he felt lucky to have returned safely home without significant limitations, other than post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Over the past several years I have seen the same bewildered expression on the faces of numerous Veterans as they struggle to understand and explain their own actions. After several months of treatment, one such client was finally able to articulate, “It’s like there’s a switch in my head that suddenly turns on and it takes everything I’ve got to fight the impulse to do something crazy.”
The much-anticipated movie “Concussion” was released on Christmas Day, and already there is Oscar Award talk for Will Smith, who plays the role of Dr. Bennet Omalu. It was Dr. Omalu who discovered the tragic progressive degenerative effects of years of multiple concussions in NFL players, which he named CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy). The film highlights the NFL’s initial response of anger and denial. Indeed, since Dr. Omalu’s discovery in 2002, the NFL has experienced lawsuits, exposés, and finger-pointing in general.