June is Brain Injury Awareness Month!
Brain Injury Awareness Month takes place across Canada in June every year. During this month, Canadians can learn about what brain injury is and how it affects people’s lives in different ways.
Brain Injury Awareness Month
What are Brain Injuries?
People with brain injuries have experienced a disease, accident, or trauma that has changed the way their brains function. The kind or degree of change people experience depends on how they have been injured. It also depends on which parts of the brain the injury has affected. Some people may regain part of the brain functioning they have lost, while others may not.
Brain injuries can affect many abilities, such as:
- Mobility
- Information processing, such as textual or verbal information
- Speech
- Focus
- Memory, organization, and time management
- Behavioural regulation and stress management
People with brain injuries often have training in which they learn tools to maintain and regulate emotions or behaviours impacted by changes in brain function. For instance:
- Responsibility
- Self-awareness
- Personal and social boundaries
- Safety
People may also have certain ways of de-stressing or calming themselves down. For instance, people may:
- Call a loved one
- Reduce physical exertion
- Step away from frustrating situations
People who have brain injuries experience them in different ways. For instance, some people with brain injuries have assistive devices or service animals, while other people’s brain injury is invisible. Similarly, some people with brain injury can drive, while others travel independently by bus, cab, or walking.
In short, brain injury can affect people’s lives in various ways. Nonetheless, people who have brain injuries can live full lives. When people know how their brain injuries affect them, they can be fully involved in their work, families, and social lives.
Raising Awareness
Many people do not have friends, family members, or colleagues who have brain injuries. As a result, they may assume that someone with a brain injury cannot do every-day things, such as:
- Work
- Raise families
- Make friends and have fulfilling social lives
- Travel
Furthermore, people may feel uncomfortable when someone discloses that they have a brain injury. This lack of knowledge may lead to discrimination. For instance, someone may not want to hire a person who has a brain injury. Brain injury Awareness Month is a chance to help the public learn more about all the things people with brain injuries are capable of. Raising awareness should reduce the discrimination that people with brain injuries may live with.
Happy Brain injury Awareness Month to all our readers!