Enable law is proud to be supporting Action for Brain Injury Week, this year taking place from the 15th – 23rd May 2023.
According to Headway UK, a national charity supporting adult acquired brain injury survivors, someone is admitted to hospital with a brain injury every 90 seconds. Not all brain injuries have a life changing impact for those that experience them but the likelihood is that you know at least one person that has suffered a brain injury whose life has been affected one way or another by it.
What is an Acquired Brain Injury (ABI)?
An ABI is an injury to the brain that takes place during or after someone is born so is not linked to a condition one has from birth. It can be caused by a health condition like a stroke or aneurysm, an infection that affects the brain like meningitis or sepsis, by the brain being starved of oxygen like the hypoxic brain injuries that often take place at birth or by trauma. Traumatic brain injuries can happen as the result of getting injured at a serious accident like a road traffic incident, a fall or a violent attack where someone receives a blow in their head.
How can an ABI affect the person that suffers it?
Our brains are fragile organs with extremely important roles to play as the control centres for all our conscious and subconscious activity. The brain controls our physical functions like movement, cognitive functions like being able to speak and emotional responses like feeling happy or sad. That means any injury to it can affect any and all of these functions. The level of the impact an ABI has depends on what part of the brain is damaged and to what extent.
Do all people affected by ABI act the same?
Depending on the level of the injury and the part of the brain affected by it, people may experience very different symptoms ranging from completely invisible ones all the way to severe disability. Through our cases, we have supported thousands of brain injury sufferers. Some of our clients experienced their ABI as new-borns and learnt to live with their disability as children whereas others were injured in an accident or because of an infection later in life and had to adapt to living with an ABI as adults. Similarly, some of our clients are experiencing ABI symptoms that are not visible to the naked eye that include behavioural and emotional issues including being unexpectedly violent or depressed, to others that need aids to be able to control any of their motor (movement) skills such as being wheelchair-bound or needing eye gazing technology to communicate.
What should I do NEXT?
Not all disabilities are visible so it is important to take the opportunity this week to learn more about different types of ABI and how they affect people so you are better equipped to support people in your community living with them. The purpose of the campaign is to give a voice to ABI survivors and their loved ones to share their stories for others to better understand their experience.
At Enable Law, we use the law to support brain injury survivors access compensation to help them adapt to what life following ABI may look like for them. No two of our clients have the same story or same journey ahead of them but we have specialists in Medical Negligence, Personal Injury, Abuse and Criminal Injury Compensation Claims that are here to provide them with expert advice, help them get answers around the issues that may have led to their injuries and where possible use their expertise to help them secure funds to enable them to start putting their lives back together. If you or a loved one have suffered an ABI as the result of receiving negligent medical care, because of an accident caused by someone else or because of being the victim of a violent crime, one of our legal experts would be happy to have a free, confidential discussion with you about the ways we may be able to help you. Please contact our team today.
