Speech and Language Problems
Home » Common Traumatic Brain Injury Symptoms » Speech and Language Problems
After a car wreck or other accident, brain injuries are often overlooked because your doctors don’t know your personality, your emotional state, or how your mind worked before the injury. You or your family members are often the first to notice changes. This series is meant to help you recognize the symptoms of a traumatic brain injury so you can get the right care.
Unfortunately, brain injuries often affect a victim’s ability to communicate. These are not only scary problems to encounter, but they can also greatly affect the victim’s quality of life going forward. Some of these issues are as follows:
Many victims find their communication problems resulting from cognitive issues such as problems with word recall, inability to tell stories or other thoughts in sequence, or difficulty understanding more complex thoughts or expressions. There are often some coping strategies that can be used to help with these problems.
Another common problem is slurring of speech. Technically, brain injury patients can develop a motor speech disorder called dysarthria. The symptoms of dysarthria may be slurred or choppy speech, slow rate of speech, inability to fully move the mouth, tongue, and jaw, and other changes in voice quality. These are obviously scary problems, but they can often be treated with speech therapy.
Though not a true communication problem, a somewhat related symptom is swallowing problems. Many victims of head injury develop issues with swallowing. This is obviously not a symptom that you would normally associate with brain injuries, but it is one that you can easily recognize if you’re looking for it.