Family Trauma Case #4

Matt is my fourteen-year-old nephew who sustained a head injury following a fall from his bike on his way. I remember visiting him in the hospital where he was admitted for four days following six hours of loss of consciousness. Matt sustained the head injury when he was nine years. He did not undergo any surgery after the incident. His recovery was uneventful. However, his case was unique in that he didn’t develop the usual primary brain injury. Mild brain contusions were reported and were managed conservatively. Turgut (2018) reports that the outcomes of head injury in the young have lower mortality rates and good outcomes as opposed to the elderly. Outcomes of the Incident Two months after the incident, Matt developed partial seizures that were attributed to the trauma. According to Turgut (2018), seizures are one of the complications of trauma. Despite receiving prophylaxis for convulsions, he still developed seizures. His nuclear family got traumatized psychologically as they had to live with the complications of this accidental trauma. Fortunately, the frequency of seizure occurrence went down rapidly six months later after medications. Having to keep Matt on medications worried his mother a lot. Coping Strategies Acceptance was the main family coping strategy. Matt’s mother had to accept the complications of the trauma. She then developed a planful problem-solving strategy (Stanisławski, 2019) to cope with the situation. She planned to occasionally visit the family therapist regularly as advised by the physician. Matt was her only child and she would go the extra mile to ensure their social and physical wellbeing as a parent. They received counseling services as part of her planful coping strategy. This was associated with the positive outcomes of the patient’s medical therapy as it would ensure medication adherence and reduction of family stress from the post-traumatic events.