Thetbifoundation

Our Story

This foundation was started for the same reason many of you will be using it. To create awareness, educate and help provide support for other families struggling with how to manage mental health issues related to a Traumatic Brain Injury.

We lost our precious son Christopher Roell from complications resulting from a Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI). Our founders and the members of this foundation are personally attached to this helping others and making a difference. It’s important to us and in memory of Christopher that we help other families and friends with TBI’s and mental health issues.

Neurosurgeons, Doctors, Psychiatrists, Therapists and Counselors provide outstanding support with regards to the initial injury and recovery, however, it’s not always easy and often challenging for the families and patients to get the education, support and connections they need to help them after the hospital and clinical stay ends. In our case about 3 months.

When we left the hospital in Santa Barbara we honestly believed based on the miraculous recovery our son made that he would be 100% OK. Initially this seem to be the case and from all appearances Christopher was managing well. However, we started noticing mental health issues develop 2-3 years later. This is when it became difficult to find the help we needed. While doctors could prescribe medications that could help with the symptoms we were seeing there was something still missing from treatment beyond what our family could provide in the way of support. Finding a TBI survivor or support group that Christopher could connect with was desperately missing. This is the gap we’ve identified and where we want to make an impact for others. While some foundations are starting to address this issue its not widespread and often completely missing in smaller towns or cities. We want to start with providing local support groups and seminars to reach the nearby communities in Nelsonville, Athens, Logan, and Zanesville, Ohio. We want to work with bigger cities like Columbus, Cincinnati, Cleveland and Akron/Canton, Youngstown, Ohio Pittsburgh, Pa. Parkersburg, W.Va. all of this communities and cities have families and patients who need help.

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