Can TBI Be Misdiagnosed as Anxiety?
Many symptoms commonly attributed to anxiety or depression—such as difficulty concentrating, mood swings, sleep disruption, and sensory overload—can actually stem from visual processing disruptions caused by a past concussion or traumatic brain injury. When standard mental-health interventions fall short, a neuro-optometric evaluation may uncover retinal processing issues that have been overlooked, offering a new path toward symptom relief.
Introduction
Not feeling like yourself after a concussion can be one of the most disorienting experiences a person faces — and one of the hardest to explain. Susan Himes, a public relations professional in Texas, knows this firsthand. After striking her head on a pole in May 2019, Susan's world unraveled. She couldn't cook, couldn't drive, couldn't follow a conversation. "Things were slipping away cognitively, physically, and emotionally," she recalls. What she didn't know at the time — and what many concussion patients never learn — is that visual and sensory processing disruptions were likely fueling much of her distress.
Important context: The Mind-Eye Institute does not provide a remedy for the brain injury itself. Its focus is on alleviating the visual stress and retinal processing disruptions that can follow concussion and traumatic brain injury (TBI).Key Takeaways
- Concussion and TBI symptoms—including difficulty concentrating, mood instability, sleep problems, and sensory sensitivity—are frequently misdiagnosed as anxiety, depression, or bipolar disorder.
- A neuro-optometric evaluation can reveal visual processing and retinal processing disruptions that standard eye exams and mental-health screenings often do not assess.
- Mind-Eye Institute clinicians are Doctors of Optometry who focus on alleviating the visual stress that follows head trauma—not on providing a remedy for the brain injury itself.
- Therapeutic lenses (Brainwear™) alter how light reaches the retina, helping the brain better integrate signals from the eyes, ears, and body to reduce symptoms.
- Kelly Zalusky spent years receiving mental-illness diagnoses before a Mind-Eye evaluation connected her lifelong struggles to childhood head injuries.
So sometimes I could be looking at you and not hear, I could see your lips moving and I would be focusing so hard trying to hear you and nothing. It would, there would be nothing.
School was tough. School was always really difficult. Because I had to choose because of how much energy I had. It was either focus on school. Or having a life because I didn't have energy to do both, and I struggled, especially a lot with that as I got older, because as I got older, it seemed like it got worse.
Focusing was hard. I had migraines all the time. So you know, I kept going to different doctors and it became a label of having a mental illness. I have. And then depending on the doctor, I would have either depression or bipolar disorder. So I would take, try different medications and none of them ever really solved the problem.
They never worked. I was having a hard time maintaining relationships and friendships, and it got to a point where I just felt alone and it just got continued to get worse and. I just, I couldn't do it anymore. I was getting really depressed. I felt really isolated and alone. I felt, horrible. I felt like I knew, I knew there was something wrong, but I, everybody kept telling me I was fine.
I was healthy. You're healthy, but this isn't right. I kept saying, this isn't right. I don't, this is, it's just your mental illness. No, I don't think so. I don't think so, and nobody, it felt like nobody was taking me seriously. And then I saw Mind-Eye Institute and I saw the other testimonials and some of it sounded like what I was going through, and I thought to myself, maybe, And then I kept seeing it and seeing it. And I finally said, you know what? Let's do it. I've, done all this other thing, all this other stuff. I've done medications, I've done therapies, and nothing helped. Why not? Let's do it. And I go in and I meet Dr. Adams. And she's one of those people that you could just see really loves her job and like she's, this is a puzzle.
She's gonna find it, she's gonna figure it out. And we're doing all these tests. Which seemed really weird to me. Different colored lenses and ringing bells. I was like, oh my God, what is this? What are we doing here? But then as I'm doing it, I'm noticing I, with certain lenses on, I'm touching the stick. I can find the belt with others.
I'm way over here when the bell is here, and I'm like, and she finally stopped. She put her hands in her hips and she just looked at me and she said, your brain is screaming. And I never felt more relieved in my life because somebody saw it. Somebody recognized that. There's something there that can't just be attributed to a, this men a mental illness, that something is really not right.
I felt like my brain was on fire all the time. I could never. Just relax. I could never understand what people were saying to me. Everything was just moving either so fast or so slow, or there was never a moment of peace. I thought I was stuck for life like this. I thought it was just gonna get worse to the point where I was just gonna be sitting there unable to communicate with people to remember things to.
Have an organized thought. Do the things that I loved, be the mom that I wanna be, and here's this woman, this doctor telling me, oh, no. We know what this is, we can fix it. And I like, I almost burst into tears right there. I think I actually did. When I first got my mind eyeglasses, I started feeling calmer and calmer, and I was sleeping through the night.
I've never slept eight hours before and progressively as I wore them. I was able to remember more. Great. I could read books that I had, that I've been wanting to read. I just couldn't sit down and do it. 'cause I loved reading and it got to the point where I couldn't even read like a couple sentences and I wouldn't remember what I read.
I, started being more social. I started trying to do more things and wanting to go out and. I am feeling how I never thought I'd feel I'm remembering more. Just from wearing the glasses alone, I thought I was gonna be stuck for the rest of my life the way I was and to be this way. I could cry just thinking about it to be as calm as I am.
And I credit the Mind, eye Institute with that. And I, feel like in a great. Way they saved me. They saved me from a life of just misery because that's what I was miserable and by proxy I was making other people in my life miserable people that I care about and love dearly. But now my, plan is I want to.
Do something more. I'm not as scared. I don't know why, but whatever was going on in my brain made me scared all the time. Then I, in a way, I never realized, 'cause I just lived with it. This constant, I can't do this, I can't do this now. I feel like a functioning person. I feel like a fun, like this is what it means to function in a way.
I've never. Understood before this is that functioning, everybody talks about going through life, having a job, having a social life, having dreams, hopes that you might actually be able to accomplish. Now I feel like I can.
When TBI Is Misdiagnosed as Anxiety: One Patient’s Story
When a traumatic brain injury goes unrecognized, the symptoms it produces—racing thoughts, sleeplessness, emotional volatility, sensory overload—can look remarkably like anxiety or depression. For 38-year-old Kelly Zalusky of Burbank, Illinois, that resemblance led to years of mental-health diagnoses that never quite fit. It was not until a neuro-optometric evaluation at the Mind-Eye Institute revealed visual processing disruptions linked to childhood head injuries that Kelly finally found an explanation—and a path toward relief.
Important: Mind-Eye Institute clinicians are Doctors of Optometry (ODs). We do not provide a remedy for concussion or TBI itself. Our focus is on identifying and alleviating the visual stress and retinal processing disruptions that often follow head trauma.“I Thought I Was Stuck for Life”: Years of Misdiagnosis
“I thought I was stuck for life with these problems – unable to focus, unable to remember, unable to have an organized thought, unable to do the things I like to do and be the mom I want to be. Then here is this woman, this doctor, telling me, ‘No, no, your struggles are not permanent. We know what the problem is, and we can help.’”— Kelly Zalusky
Those words capture the relief Kelly felt when optometrist Carla Adams, OD, of the Mind-Eye Institute offered the first explanation of symptoms that had followed her much of her life.
“Many doctors had told me for years that my problems were due to mental illness, but Dr. Adams said my symptoms were likely the result of a concussion or traumatic brain injury that I had incurred as a child,” Kelly recalls. “She told me, ‘Your brain is screaming. It is stuck in fight-or-flight mode and just keeps cycling and cycling. Your body is on constant, high alert, and it is affecting how you perceive the world.’”
For Kelly, the pattern was familiar. She had been prescribed medications for depression, then for bipolar disorder. None of them helped; several made things worse.
“I was depressed, felt isolated and alone. I could not think. Sometimes, doctors prescribed me medications for depression, at other times for bipolar disorder. The medications did not help; they only made my symptoms worse. And all the time I am thinking I do not have a mental illness. Something else is causing my problems.”
Symptoms That Mimicked Mental Illness
Since childhood, Kelly had struggled with a constellation of symptoms that were repeatedly attributed to psychological causes. Her experience reflects a broader pattern: when a head injury goes undetected, the resulting sensory and visual processing disruptions can look nearly identical to mental-health conditions.
Kelly's symptoms included:
School had been exhausting. As an adult, the symptoms became more acute, leaving Kelly feeling isolated and unable to participate in daily life the way she wanted to.
The Turning Point: Finding the Mind-Eye Institute
Kelly first encountered the Mind-Eye Institute through YouTube and Facebook ads. Her initial reaction was skepticism.
“How could a place like that and a pair of glasses help me?” she remembers thinking. Her family and friends shared the doubt.
But curiosity pulled her forward. She watched videotaped testimonials from Mind-Eye patients describing symptoms remarkably similar to her own—people who had found comfort and relief through specialized lenses.
“Why not give it a try?” she eventually decided. “Everybody – my family, my friends – were skeptical at first, thinking eyeglasses were not the solution to my problems, but I decided to go ahead anyway and make an appointment. That was in early 2020. It is probably one of the best decisions I have ever made.”
It was questioning from a Mind-Eye patient advocate that prompted Kelly to think back and realize she had suffered several head injuries as a youngster—injuries that occurred long before being diagnosed with a learning disorder. The advocate recognized her symptoms as classic indicators of concussion-related visual processing disruption.
“Dr. Adams’ diagnosis was validation of my belief for all these years that I did not have a mental illness,” Kelly says. “Her words brought me instant relief. I wanted to cry.”
How Brainwear™ and Retinal Processing Support Recovery
To understand what Mind-Eye’s approach involves, it helps to draw a distinction between eyesight and visual processing. Eyesight refers to the physical gathering of light by the eyes—the familiar 20/20 measurement. Visual processing, by contrast, is the mind’s interpretation of that light: how the brain organizes, prioritizes, and makes sense of the signals the retina sends.
“Mind-Eye Brainwear™ glasses are not eyeglasses for sharpening eyesight to 20/20 but for changing retinal processing,” explains Deborah Zelinsky, OD, founder and executive director of research at the Mind-Eye Institute. “They work by bending light in different ways across the retina. The light triggers electrical signals that propagate through nerves. In fact, the retina helps route information through multiple brain pathways.”
Dr. Zelinsky, a retinal processing expert, describes how variations in light signals can open new brain signaling pathways that are uncorrupted by injury or circumvent damaged ones, thereby supporting a patient’s spatial awareness and perception.
This approach is grounded in the understanding that the retina is composed of brain tissue and is part of the central nervous system, notes Dr. Adams.
“At the Mind-Eye Institute, we recognize the critical role that the retina plays in brain activity and the importance of expanding on traditional eye tests for people with compromised brain function to evaluate their visual processing,” Dr. Zelinsky says.
When visual processing is functioning well, people can understand and interact appropriately with the world around them, Dr. Adams explains. When brain circuitry is disrupted due to injury or neurological conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder, people may become confused about their surrounding environment and exhibit inappropriate reactions to movement, sounds, and light.
When Sound and Sight Fall Out of Sync: The Z-Bell℠ Test
One of Kelly’s most distressing symptoms was the disconnect between what she saw and what she heard. She described looking directly at someone speaking—watching their lips move—yet not processing the words. At other times, she would hear words but not understand their meaning.
These kinds of auditory-visual integration difficulties are evaluated at Mind-Eye using the Z-Bell℠ Test, a patented assessment developed by Dr. Zelinsky. The test measures the synchronization between a patient’s auditory and visual spatial maps—essentially, whether the brain is correctly aligning what the ears hear with where the eyes perceive things to be.
Disruptions in this synchronization are common after concussion and can contribute to the sensory overload, conversation difficulties, and sound sensitivity that many patients describe. The Z-Bell™ Test provides clinical data that helps Mind-Eye’s optometrists customize Brainwear™ prescriptions to promote better sensory integration.
Relief and Recovery: “I Can Be the Mom I Want to Be”
Kelly describes the Brainwear™ lenses prescribed to her as “absolutely amazing.” By summer 2021, she estimated she was about 75 percent improved.
“I am feeling much calmer, relaxed. I am sleeping better. In fact, recently I slept a full eight hours. I cannot remember ever sleeping that long,” Kelly says.
The improvements extended across nearly every area of her daily life:
She could read books that had been impossible before.
She became more social, eager to go out with family and friends.
She could concentrate, focus, and engage in normal conversations.
Most importantly, she could interact with her daughter and actually remember what her daughter told her.
Even her Taekwondo instructor noticed the changes, telling Kelly she was demonstrating much better balance and recall of martial arts moves during class sessions.
“I am forever grateful to the Mind-Eye Institute,” Kelly states. “Dr. Adams said she could help me – and she did.”
Note: Although Kelly Zalusky reports progressive symptom relief, her experience is individual and not guaranteed for every patient. Results vary.
Relief and Recovery: “I Can Be the Mom I Want to Be”
If you or a loved one has been living with symptoms attributed to anxiety or depression—but something has never quite felt right about that explanation—a neuro-optometric evaluation may offer new insight. The Mind-Eye Institute’s Symptoms Assessment is a free, 60-second starting point to help determine whether a full evaluation could be beneficial.
Medical Disclaimer: The content on this page is for informational purposes only. Mind-Eye Institute clinicians are Doctors of Optometry (ODs), not medical doctors or neurologists. Neuro-optometric care alleviates visual and retinal processing disruptions; it does not cure or reverse traumatic brain injury. Individual results vary. Always consult a qualified medical professional regarding health concerns.
FAQs
FAQs
Yes. Many concussion and TBI symptoms—including difficulty concentrating, mood swings, sleep disruption, and hypervigilance—overlap with anxiety and depression. When the original head injury is unknown or forgotten, clinicians may attribute the symptoms to a mental-health condition. A neuro-optometric evaluation can help identify underlying visual processing disruptions that standard screenings likely don’t assess.
Eyesight refers to the physical gathering of light by the eyes—what a standard 20/20 exam measures. Visual processing is the mind’s interpretation of that light, including spatial awareness, depth perception, and how the brain coordinates signals from the eyes with input from the ears and body. A person can have perfect eyesight and still experience significant visual processing problems.
Brainwear™ is the term Mind-Eye Institute uses for its therapeutic lenses. Unlike standard eyeglasses that sharpen eyesight, Brainwear™ alters how light reaches the retina to influence retinal processing. By changing the way light signals propagate through neural pathways, these lenses may help the brain better integrate sensory information and reduce symptoms like light sensitivity, spatial discomfort, and difficulty concentrating.
The Z-Bell℠ Test is a patented assessment developed by Dr. Deborah Zelinsky that evaluates synchronization between a patient’s auditory and visual spatial maps. It helps determine whether the brain is accurately aligning what the ears hear with where the eyes perceive things to be—a common area of disruption after concussion or TBI.
No. Mind-Eye Institute clinicians are Doctors of Optometry, not medical doctors or neurologists. They do not provide a remedy for brain injury itself. Instead, they focus on identifying and alleviating the visual stress and retinal processing disruptions that can follow concussion or TBI, which may help relieve symptoms like light sensitivity, spatial disorientation, and difficulty concentrating.
If you experience persistent anxiety-like symptoms—especially paired with light or sound sensitivity, balance problems, difficulty tracking conversations, or spatial discomfort—and standard mental-health interventions have not provided relief, it may be worth considering whether a past head injury is contributing. A comprehensive neuro-optometric evaluation can assess visual processing function and uncover disruptions that other exams may not detect.
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