See the hidden me – Action for Brain Injury Week 2022

The 16 to 22 May 2022 is “Action for Brain Injury Week” – a vitally important time where Headway, the Brain Injury Association look to raise awareness about the issues faced by brain injury survivors.

This year the theme is “See the hidden me” – designed to raise awareness of the challenges, misunderstandings, and frustration that brain injury survivors face in their lives every day.

Brain injury has often been called “the hidden disability”. Someone with a brain injury can look exactly as they did before they were injured. In meeting someone with a brain injury – there is often no outward sign that the person has an injury. Yet brain injury can cause significant obstacles that impact on the ability to lead a full life. The symptoms are varied, and can include problems with concentration, planning, decision making, behaviour, fatigue and many others. With no obvious sign that these issues relate to a brain injury can lead to reactions from others which are unhelpful and frustrating to the brain injury survivor.

One of our brain injury claims experts, Philip Edwards, said:-

“Having represented brain injury survivors for a number of years, I have seen first hand the challenges they face and the reactions they get from other people they interact with. I have seen brain injury survivors being criticised for apparent lack of concentration at work, for being lazy, for being uncaring and on occasion aggressive. In rare but serious situations people have been accused of being drunk and even had involvement with the police – when in fact all of these behaviours were as a direct consequence of a brain injury, and the characterisations of the behaviours were wrong..

It is for those reasons that I am delighted that in “Action for Brain Injury Week” the focus is on the “hidden me”. It is vital to raise awareness of this issue – to give the public greater understanding of the nature of having a brain injury. Survivors of brain injury want to live as independent a life as possible – and better understanding of the problems they face will help to remove the challenges and frustrations caused by the attitude of people they meet – who may not understand the obstacles they are trying to overcome”

For further information about Action for Brain Injury week you can visit the Headway website here ABI Week 2022: See the hidden me | Headway