Traumatic Brain Injury

Traumatic Brain Injury

Introduction

Over the past couple of years there has been much different exceptionality I have been studying. I choose to do traumatic brain injury as my exceptionality project because it seemed interesting and I hadn't heard that much about TBI. TBI isn't one of the most popular brain injuries but it is becoming more and more popular as this decade goes on.

Definition of Exceptionality

The IDEA defines traumatic brain injury as:

An acquired injury to the brain caused by an external physical force, resulting in total or partial functional disability or psychosocial impairments, or both, that adversely affects a child's educational performance. The term applies to open or closed head injuries resulting in impairments in one or more areas, such as cognition; language; memory; attention; reasoning; abstract thinking; judgment; problem-solving; sensory; perceptual and motor abilities; psychosocial behavior; physical functions; information processing; and speech. The term does not apply to brain injuries that are congenital or generative or brain injuries induced by birth trauma (Heward).

Characteristics

There are many different characteristics associated with TBI. TBI has three main characteristics: Physical and sensory changes, Cognitive impairments, and Social, behavioral, and emotional problems. With physical and sensory changes have many characteristics associated with it. They are: chronic headaches, dizziness, light-headedness, nausea; vision impairments; hearing impairments; alterations in sense of taste, touch, and smell; sleep problems; stress-related disorders; poor body temperature regulation; recurrent seizure activity; poor coordination and balance; and reduced speed of motor performance and precision of movement (Heward).

Some other characteristics associated with cognitive changes and academic problems are: Difficulty keeping up discussions, instructional presentations, note taking; difficulty concentrating or attending task at hand; difficulty making transitions; inability to organize work and environment; problems in planning, organizing, pacing tasks and activities; extremely sensitive to distraction; tendency to perseverate, inflexible in thinking; impairments in reading comprehension; impairments in expressive oral or written language (Heward).

The last category of characteristics is social, behavioral and emotional problems. Some other characteristics associated with this topic are: chronically agitated, irritable, anxious; increased aggressiveness; impaired ability to self-manage, lowered impulsive control, poor anger control; difficulty dealing with change, poor coping strategies; may overestimate own ability; decreased insight into self and others, reduced judgment; decreased frustration tolerance, frequent temper outbursts and overreactions to events; may talk compulsively and excessively; inability to take cues from the environment (Heward).

Prevalence

TBI is an injury that effects a younger population. The occurrence peaks with age groups below 5 years, between 15-24 years, and over 70 years. The maximum peaks are 133 per 100,000 in the 15-24 year age range and 165 per 100,000 in the over 65 age group (TBI Inform). Injuries to the head are common in children and adolescents.

Head injuries occur in the pediatric population (1 month to 15 yrs) at a rate of about 1 million per year. (Heller Etal., 1996). Estimated each year 1 in 500 school-age children will be hospitalized with traumatic head injuries. 1 in 30 children will sustain a significant head injury by the age of 15, and 1 in 10,000 children will die as a result of head trauma. (Hill, 1999; Whaley & Wong, 1995.)

Traumatic brain injury is the leading cause of death in children, accounting for approximately one-third of all accidental deaths in children; and it is the most common acquired disability in childhood. In 1991-1992, the first school year after traumatic brain injury was added to IDEA as a separate disability category, only 330 school-age students were served nationally. By 2000-2001 school year, the number of children with traumatic brain injury between the ages of 6 and 21 served in special education programs increased dramatically to 14, 829 (Heward).

Types

There are two different types of traumatic brain injury.