I have a son who will be 16 tomorrow. In May 2005 he had a serious motocross accident when he was 13 that rendered him unconscious and seizing for approximatly 5 minutes. Other than an unrelated brain tumor found in his left cerebellum, the scan revealed no injury from the crash.

Sometime after his accident, he has changed. He is very defiant, agrumentative, violant towards his brothers, blames other for his actions, distructive, and not seeing dangers in things (ie spraying accelorants on a flame and not seeing the problem!). His grades are dropping in school and he says when he studies he forgets the information learned by the time he tests. He also says that he notices after getting his tests back, that he makes alot of mistakes from "stupid errors" as he calls it. He says he thinks one thing, but writes down another. He graduated middle school with a 4.0 so he has never had issues in school before.

But since he is a teenager, how do I know if the issues I have with him are just him being a typical teenager suffering from a mood disorder or is there a possiblity he has PCS as well?

The psychologist I take him to told me he feels strongly that his behavior is a result of brain damage from his accident. He also feels he has a mood disorder and has put him on Abilify.

Where do we go from here? Is there a way to confirm the psychologists suspecions? He told me usually scans from concussions that do not show injury can still result in PCS so the diagnoses is left to a clinical diagnoses.

Please help lead me in the right direction.