Loss and recovery after concussion: Adolescent patients give voice to their concussion experience

BACKGROUND: Most concussion studies have focused on the perspectives and expertise of health‐care providers and caregivers. Very little qualitative research has been done, engaging the adolescents who have suffered concussion and continue to experience the consequences in their everyday life. OBJECTIVE: To understand the experiences of recovery from the perspective of adolescent patients of concussion and to present the findings through their voices. METHODS: Two semi‐structured focus groups and two narrative interviews were conducted with a small group of 7 adolescents. Grounded theory was used to analyse the data. RESULTS: Participants experience continuing difficulty 1‐5 years after treatment with cognitive, emotional, social and mental well‐being. The overriding experience among older adolescents (17‐20) is a sense of irreversibility of the impact of concussion in all these areas. CONCLUSION: There is a significant gap between the medical determination of recovery and what patients understand as recovery. Adolescents do not feel ‘recovered’ more than a year after they are clinically assessed as ‘good to go’. Systematic follow‐up and support from a multi‐disciplinary health‐care team would strengthen youths' coping and resilience.