Senator Mullin Sponsors Bill To Improve Treatment For Traumatic Brain Injuries

A Senate committee last week gave overwhelming support to a measure to improve treatment for people who suffer from traumatic brain injuries, or TBI's. The bill's primary sponsor is Oklahoma Senator Markwayne Mullin, whose family understands this issue better than most.

In a recent interview, Mullin (R-OK) talked about the importance of this legislation, not just to him but to the thousands of Americans each year whose loved ones sustain a traumatic brain injury.

"There’s a lot more that can be done," Mullin said, something he understands from personal experience.

Senator Mullin went into some detail describing his family's experience to fellow members of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions last month.

"I'm very involved in traumatic brain injuries because of my son, Jim Mullin, who's now wrestling at Oklahoma State," Mullin started.

In 2020, Mullin explained, his then 15-year-old son Jim, a nationally ranked wrestler, took a blow to the head during a match in Kansas. Sen. Mullin was coaching him.

"And he walks over to me," Mullin recalled, "and he says that I don't feel good, and he looked at me and collapsed, coded, had severe oxygen depletion."

Mullin says it took 18 months of therapy and rehab at the Center for Neuro Skills in Bakersfield, California, to get Jim right again, but along the way, he says, it was clear to him there's no consistency in treatment or in diagnosis for TBI’s.

"We talked to 12 neurologists, and you’ll get 12 different answers," Mullin said in our interview. "What we’re trying to do is advance the TBI research and consistency. There needs to be answers."

Mullin's bill would reauthorize the 1996 Traumatic Brain Injury Act for the 6th time, providing continued support to grant programs that help states increase access to TBI services and fund research to reduce the prevalence of TBIs.

"The more we understand it, the more answers that parents or husbands or wives or whoever the person may be that’s taking care of this individual has answers and a direction to go," said Mullin, "because we were desperately searching for it."

There is a companion bill moving through the U.S. House.