Your Mental Illness May Be Caused by Head Trauma

Undiagnosed head trauma may be the underlying cause of many of the learning disabilities and other mental illnesses that are characterized by thinking problems (what professionals often refer to as “cognitive deficits”). So says a new study that the Wall Street Journal reported on today.

What’s new is the contention of some researchers that there are many other cases where a severe past blow to the head, resulting in unconsciousness or confusion, is the unrecognized source of such problems. “Unidentified traumatic brain injury is an unrecognized major source of social and vocational failure,” says Wayne A. Gordon, director of the Brain Injury Research Center at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, where much of the research is being done.

But don’t be alarmed if your child had a fall and hit their heads:

Doctors say about 85% of common falls in infancy don’t produce long-term deficits, but that some do.

Read more: http://psychcentral.com

Dr. John Grohol is the CEO and founder of Psych Central. He has been writing about online behavior, mental health technology

and psychology since 1992. Dr. Grohol also sits on the edirorial board of the journal Cyberpsychology, behavior and social networking, and is a founding board member of the Society for Participatory Medicine.