Brain Injury Symptoms: Speech and Language Problems

As I repeatedly tell clients, brain injuries often go undiagnosed following car wrecks or other accidents because doctors don’t usually know you well enough to make a pre-injury and post-injury comparison of your intelligence, emotional well-being, and general personality.  As a result, it’s often up to you or your family members to notice the symptoms of a brain injury and convey those to medical providers so you get the best care possible.  But to do that, you need to know the symptoms of brain injuries.  This series is designed to help you do that.

Unfortunately,  brain injuries often affect a victim’s ability to communicate.  These are not only scary problems to encounter, but they can greatly affect the victim’s quality of life going forward.  Some of these issues are as follows:

Cognitive issues. 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.

Slurring or other speech 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 mouth, tongue and jaw, and other changes in voice quality.  These are obviously scary problems, but they can often be treated with speech therapy.

Swallowing problems. 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.