An excellent webinar recording about working with veterans
By Malayka Gormally. This article was initially published in the 11/11/25 Edition of our Concussion Update newsletter; please consider subscribing.
In this recording of a recent webinar hosted by the U-Michigan Concussion Center, Dr. Lisa Brenner, a rehab neuropsychologist, gives a comprehensive overview of the research on the relationship between mTBI, blast exposure, and PTSD in military populations, and adds military-specific recommendations for evaluation and treatment.
Clinical practice recommendations
Dr. Brenner emphasizes the importance of providers learning about the military context, including where and when the individual served; she recommends this website for information about each military conflict. She discusses how military occupational codes have been identified as a way to estimate an individual's risk of exposure to mTBI and to blast exposure. In addition, she stresses the difficulty of differentiating whether a patient's symptoms are from PTSD or TBI. Dr. Brenner recommends the Military Culture Course Modules for Healthcare Professionals produced by the Uniformed Services University Center for Deployment Psychology.
Dr. Brenner advises providers to "Treat the symptoms with evidence-based interventions," the title of her 2009 study, and this recommendation remains true today. Patients with blast or TBI history often hear from their provider statements such as "You should be recovered by now," and "These symptoms don't fit with your history." Dr. Brenner recommends that providers bypass this type of thinking, identify the most distressing symptoms, and treat those symptoms with evidence-based treatments.
In addition, Dr. Brenner recommends sharing Serving Our Voices: Stories from the Veterans History Project with their patients (stories are categorized by conflict, for example, Iraq and Afghanistan).
