People First Radio – June 19, 2025People First Radio – June 19, 2025
People First Radio
People First Radio focuses on how brain injury connects with homelessness, mental health, and substance use, blending research with lived experience. Conversations highlight stigma, gaps in care, and community-driven ideas for more compassionate, long-term support.
0:00•21 Jun 2025
Hidden Brain Injuries, Homelessness and Recovery on People First Radio
Episode Overview
- Brain injuries are highly prevalent among people experiencing homelessness, often alongside mental health and substance use disorders, yet remain largely unrecognised and untreated.
- Standard healthcare tools struggle to distinguish symptoms of brain injury from those of withdrawal, intoxication, or mental illness, highlighting a need for better assessment methods.
- Community members, service providers, and people with lived experience prioritised supportive housing, rental subsidies, and needs-based services that focus on quality of life, not just crisis care.
- Stigma towards people who are unhoused, use substances, or live with brain injuries is a major barrier, and public education is recommended to build compassion and understanding.
- A national strategy on brain injury is presented as a key step to break down service silos, improve data collection, and strengthen care for people living at the intersection of brain injury, addiction, and homelessness.
“If you’ve seen one brain injury, you’ve seen one brain injury.”
Curious about how others navigate their sobriety journey? This People First Radio instalment zooms in on brain injury and its tight links with homelessness, mental health, and substance use, all with a calm, thoughtful tone that feels more like a community conversation than a lecture. Host Joe Pugh speaks with researcher and PhD student Cole Kennedy from the University of Victoria, whose work sits at the intersection of brain injury, addictions, and housing.
Kennedy shares striking statistics on how common traumatic and overdose-related brain injuries are among people who are unhoused, calling it a “hidden brain injury epidemic”. His research brings together people with lived experience, front-line workers, and first responders to set priorities for healthcare that “works for the people who need it the most”. The episode highlights practical calls for change: accessible and affordable supportive housing, better-trained service providers, joined-up healthcare records, and long-term, quality-of-life-focused support instead of one-off crisis fixes.
Kennedy also stresses compassion, reminding listeners that “if you’ve seen one brain injury, you’ve seen one brain injury,” and that most people with cognitive difficulties can still make their own decisions, including about treatment. You’ll also hear earlier conversations with family member and advocate Adele Rogers, plus outreach workers Lelah Manson and Lance Point from Snunemok First Nation.
Rogers talks about the shock of her son’s severe brain injury, the thin line between hope and uncertainty in rehab, and the power of simple tools like brain injury ID cards to reduce everyday stigma. Manson and Point weave in their own experiences of addiction, trauma, and recovery, stressing that many clients live with both brain injury and substance use, yet often get help for only one side of the problem.
If you care about sobriety, recovery, or homelessness, this episode may leave you asking: how could services change if brain injury was always part of the conversation?
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