30% of all deaths related to injuries in the US are connected to traumatic brain injury. If a brain injury does not kill you, then it is highly likely that you will face mental health issues.

Immediately following a traumatic brain injury assessments need to be made of what symptoms the person is experiencing.

Symptoms include : loss of consciousness, short-term memory problems, confusion, numbness in fingers or toes, headaches, nausea, dizziness, blurred vision, or unusual fatigue. People who have faced traumatic brain injury face a change in emotions. Anxiety and depression are usually part of the recovery process. If you had mood disorders before experiencing the injury, the risk of being depressed is high. The depression starts during the recovery period, but most people face it a year after the injury. The reason for the depression is that traumatic brain injuries alter or damage the brain’s cellular pathways. These adjustments can lead to various symptoms like forgetfulness, impaired impulse control, and low concentration. These dysfunctions can cause hopelessness and low self-esteem. People with brain injuries face anxiety based on the symptoms of the damage, and they worry that they may experience these symptoms forever.

Additionally, there are other means through which mood disorder can be triggered by a brain injury. An injury to the brain can adjust the way people express or feel emotions. Brain injury patients can have a hard time curbing passions and may portray mood swings. Others may feel emotions intensely and very quickly but with slight lasting effect. The mood swings are a consequence of the direct damage to the emotional processing centers of the brain. In case the support team of the patient fail to understand how to help them, the condition might cause social isolation.

Moreover, when the brain’s physical structures that affect emotions are damaged, mood changes can be triggered. According to research , brain injury patients suffering from depression have less nerve tissue or white matter around the neurons in the brain than other brain injury patients without depression. Neurons allow transmission of electrical signals between cells. Therefore, mood disorders related to brain injury are as a result of a communication problem because neurons are struggling to connect appropriately. The patterns of brain injury could affect how the brain processes emotions. Damage to the wrong part could affect the patient’s mood as the brain attempts to repair itself.

Inflammation and genetics also affect mental health after brain injury. According to a study, levels of chronic inflammation after a brain injury caused depression. Another study of workers veterans with anxiety after brain injury discovered that patients with a gene that controls the repair of neurons by the body faced a high likelihood of being depressed.

If you have experienced a traumatic brain injury, seek help immediately. This sort of physical trauma can have long lasting effects that are impossible to diagnose on your own. Some symptoms don’t even come up for weeks to months and some of those can be life threatening. If there’s any doubt in your mind, it’s better to go get professional help than to suffer the consequences of not. If you’re experiencing mental health issues like anxiety or depression, whether you’ve had them before or not, you should go to counseling and receive emotional and mental help.