Luz Garcini, a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Psychology at Rice and the study's lead author, said that DREAMers in particular are at risk for
psychological distress and
diminished quality of life as a result of the many complex stressors they face.
Given the failure to find group differences in
psychological distress and family functioning and the relatively low levels of stress and burden even among the severe TBI group, we concluded that injury stresses
diminished after longer periods following injury and that most families, even those of children with severe injuries, adapted favorably.