This complication used to be considered extremely rare, but the research puts the hypopituitarism risk somewhere between 25-40%.
Our son had a traumatic brain injury aged 7, and we discovered after his death from his ex-girlfriend that he had been impotent. According to her, he would not seek help from a doctor, and he never told us.
We think he killed himself because this year was full of family weddings – his sister, his cousin, his best friend’s brother – and his best friend + wife had their second child. He must have felt he was getting left behind. After his girlfriend left him six years ago he never found anybody else, and now we think it’s because he felt any relationship would be doomed.
If the various professionals he approached had thought “History of head injury, let’s test his hormone levels” they would have found that his testosterone was low and he could have been successfully treated with hormone replacement.
Also if our son had been aware of the connection, and realised it was a physiological problem not a psychological one, he would have been much more likely to take his problem to the doctor, instead of believing it to be somehow his own fault and thinking he could sort it out with self-help books.
So we think it’s vital to get this bit of knowledge out there, to everybody it could possibly affect. A lot of young men smash themselves up on bikes and motorbikes and in cars, and hospitals are getting better and better at saving their lives. So there might be quite a few.
See this article for more info..
