Brain Injury and Personnel Preparation at Mississippi State University

According to the Centers for Disease Control (Langlois, Rutland-Brown, & Thomas, 2006), traumatic brain injury (TBI) affects more than 1.4 million persons annually in the United States. Those who are most affected are children and adolescents, aged 0-4 and 15-19, young adults aged 19-25 (among military personnel in war zones), and persons aged 60 and older (Brain Injury Association of America, 2010). These incidences include shaken baby and child abuse cases, automobile accidents, sports injuries, war injuries, and falls. We do know that older persons with vision loss are more likely to fall and that falls among this age group are one of the major causes of TBI. We also know that older persons often have strokes and other neurological conditions, known as acquired brain injury (ABI), that have an impact on cognition and independence in much the same way as does TBI. Unfortunately, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have added to the number of young adults with TBI and vision loss, but the related work of the Department of Veterans Affairs has also given us more empirical information on how to work with this population. One of the roles of universities is to conduct research and integrate the results of research into the preparation of professionals in a given program of study. As a result, I believe that vision-related personnel preparation programs need to address this issue. Mississippi State University (MSU) has a Vision Specialist in Vocational Rehabilitation Graduate Certificate Program that is designed for vocational rehabilitation counselors with caseloads of persons who are blind or have low vision. Usually about 80% of the students in this program are working vocational rehabilitation counselors, some with many years of experience, and a few are teachers of students with visual impairments, vision rehabilitation teachers, and orientation and mobility (O&M) specialists or graduate students, who are from all over the United States. Over the past 5 years, we have noticed that more and more vocational rehabilitation counselors who serve persons who are blind have persons with brain injuries in their caseloads. In our program, under the general topic of special populations, we have covered vision loss related to ABI and TBI and HIV in a superficial way, but have paid more attention to the visual conditions associated with aging, diabetes, and deaf-blindness. But because of the increase in cases of brain injury in caseloads and my own experience when my husband, who has been legally blind all his life, acquired a TBI three years ago, MSU has increased the attention that is given this area of service. The motivation for the increased attention to brain injury is that specialization brain in jury-related vision loss is not well addressed in our field, and resources for treating this condition vary considerably around the United States. The program at Mississippi State University consists of four hybrid distance education courses with three weeks of intensive residency. In a nutshell, our courses cover the medical aspects of blindness and low vision with implications for employment, low vision, special populations, history and legislation, assistive technology, O&M, vocational rehabilitation therapy, transition, various resources (including organizations and professionals), special education perspectives, career development, job placement, and a field experience practicum. …