Cole Kennedy, a Phd student in neuropsychology at the University of Victoria, led newly published research aimed at improving healthcare for people with brain injuries experiencing homelessness and mental health and substance use issues.
“We know that every brain injury is different, so the cookie cutter approach doesn’t work in terms of treatment as well as in terms of diagnosis,” Kennedy said.
“Amongst people experiencing homelessness, where we know there’s lots of different current health conditions going on, as well as mental health and substance use conditions, it can be difficult to tease apart what symptoms are from a brain injury and what symptoms are from mental health or substance use. So the tools we use as healthcare providers are not well attuned to teasing those pieces apart and understanding whether someone may have had a brain injury because symptoms like fatigue and headache and irritability may be symptoms of a mental health disorder, they may be symptoms of withdrawal or signs of intoxication from a substance, or they could be signs of a brain injury.”
“One of the big priorities for researchers and for healthcare providers is figuring out how do we best recognize brain injury in this population, and how do we differentiate it between mental health and substance use disorders?”
The research asked people on the front lines of the issue about their priorities for addressing brain injury.
“This study was different because we went right to the people who were engaging with these issues on a daily basis. So people with lived experience, community support workers, first responders. We brought them all together and we really used a bottom up approach. And we said, what? What should we do? And in what order? What is most important?” Said Kennedy.
Data was collected at a BC Consensus on Brain Injury event held in Victoria in 2024. Lea-lah Manson and Lance Point, outreach workers with Snuneymuxw First Nation, spoke about their experiences at the BC Consensus on Brain Injury day on a program first broadcast in 2024. This episode revisits some of their comments, as well as excerpts from an interview with Adele Rogers, whose son experienced a traumatic brain injury following a car accident.
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