Real Story: Jill

Jill had been living with uncontrollable crying and
laughing episodes for years. Then her doctor started
asking important questions about her medical history.

After a traumatic brain injury, I started experiencing uncontrollable crying and laughing episodes. As the years went by, and I was still displaying sudden, frequent, uncontrollable crying or laughing, I got to the point where I was definitely ready to throw in the towel on the whole “getting help” thing. But that’s when my psychiatric nurse practitioner reviewed my symptoms and asked me if I had ever suffered any serious head injuries. It turned out to be an important medical detail that I had not thought serious enough to disclose.

Jill is a real patient living with PBA. Image reflects patient with PBA at the time the image was captured.

She asked me if I ever had episodes of crying or laughing that happened at the “wrong” time, or seemed unrelated to the emotions I was feeling. I immediately remembered an incident when this bizarre symptom did serious damage to the most important relationship in my life—a time when I laughed at my son’s sadness.

My nurse practitioner said she thought I was suffering from something called Pseudobulbar Affect, or PBA. She explained how PBA can occur in people with a history of neurological conditions or brain injury and affects the way the brain controls emotion. She explained how PBA episodes can be exaggerated and not match how a person really feels. She said that my history of traumatic brain injury, plus the sudden, frequent, involuntary episodes of laughing and crying I described, seemed to indicate PBA.