A beginners guide to fatigue research

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A beginner's guide to the research about fatigue after brain injury

Welcome to the first post of my new blog. My aim in this blog is to write in plain English about the work I did for my PhD. But more importantly, to write about the research that explores brain injury fatigue, making it more accessible to people who aren't researchers. I aim to share what I learnt about brain injury fatigue, how it affects people in their daily life and the evidence around how best to treat fatigue.


This whole journey started when another researcher asked me to look into fatigue after stroke. I was working as a lecturer in occupational therapy but had worked with people with stroke and brain injury in my life as a therapist. 

I was interested in fatigue because of my personal resulting from an underactive thyroid condition. When I say experienced fatigue, I mean the kind of tiredness where I couldn't take one more step and felt completely overwhelmed by daily life. It is really hard to put it into words but for the first time in my life, I felt close to collapse, I couldn't cope and I stopped seeing myself as a strong person. For me, the answer was relatively straightforward - take the medication, get my thyroxine levels up and get back to normal.  It took months but I got there eventually, although it took much longer for my self-confidence and self-belief to recover. 

I am not claiming that this experience was anything like that experienced after brain injury but it did give me some idea of how difficult living fatigue might be. Talking to people with brain injury who live with fatigue, carers and clinicians brought to life the statement (or a version of it) often seem in journal papers;  fatigue is common after brain injury, it is disabling and long-lasting. But what do we mean by fatigue? How is it explained and what do people do to limit the impact of fatigue on their everyday life?

Let's start with what is fatigue and how do we conceptualise fatigue in the UK in the 21st century.... 


Location: United Kingdom

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