People who have suffered a brain injury may have trouble with judgment. Depending on the nature and extent of the brain injury, the person may be in need of a temporary or permanent guardian in order to deal with financial and care issues.

Sometimes the survivor has little insight into their own deficits, which compounds the problems. This is called denial and can persist for years.

Some of the problems encountered by survivors, especially in the early stages of returning home are problems with every day tasks such as cooking or self-care. Other problems frequently encountered are tremendous long distance bills (when the survivor doesn't understand the consequences), a susceptibility to telemarketers, or dealing with the concept of money (or lack of money). Following are some thoughts from survivors and caregivers on judgment.

When is it denial and/or when is it lack of awareness or a gross lack of overlap in perceived reality? There are times that I don't think the person is in denial...I wonder if they can make enough connections to perceive what everyone else does? Is the lack of awareness denial? Or is it inability to process?

I had to laugh. I thought I was the only one dealing with this ...

I, too, have had my long distance carrier switched and have had to refuse package deliveries of God only knows what! The worst is having to cancel credit cards that stupid people actually send him....obviously they don't do much checking.

Once I came home and found this really ugly water softener thing attached to my kitchen faucet. I really became unglued (the thing was $80 plus monthly fees). When I got done yelling at the man on the phone, he couldn't get over to my house fast enough to get it out of there. Then there was the time he wrote to President Clinton and asked him to call his union local and tell them to let him go back to work. The President wrote back and said he was referring his letter to Health and Human services. Thank God I never heard from them....and the list goes on!