Brain injuries are either congenital or acquired.
When damage to the brain occurs before, during or shortly after birth it is considered congenital.
Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) happens post-birth (not congenital), is non-hereditary and non-degenerative, when the brain is damaged by an internal or external source resulting in partial or total functional impairment in one or more areas, including but not limited to: attention, memory, reasoning, problem solving, speed of processing decision-making learning, perception, sensory impairment, speech and language, motor and physical functioning, or psychosocial behavior.
Two subtypes of Acquired Brain Injury:
Non-Traumatic Brain Injury: caused by damage to the brain through internal factors such as hypoxia (lack of oxygen), exposure to toxins, pressure from a tumor, etc.
Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI): an alteration in brain function or other evidence of brain pathology caused by an external force from two primary mechanisms:
- Impact to the head (Traumatic Impact).
- Inertial forces (Traumatic Inertial) as in whiplash where the brain is jostled back and forth within the skull, sometimes called a contra coups injury.
Common Causes of Brain Injury
| Stroke | Poison |
| Virus | Tumor |
| Anoxia/Hypoxia | Falls |
| Motor Vehicle Accident | Struck by an object |
| Sports | Improvised Explosive Device (IED) |
TBI Severity
What “mild”, “moderate” & “severe” actually mean
Severity is based on things measured at or near the time of injury: whether consciousness was lost and for how long, how large the gap in memory around the event is, the score on the Glasgow Coma Scale, and what any scans show.
“Mild” describes the event, not the experience. A mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), also known as a concussion, can still leave a person exhausted by lunchtime, tearful without warning, and unable to hold a thread of conversation for months afterward.
Many survivors find the word “mild” genuinely hurtful, and it’s easy to understand why. It’s a clinical grade for what happened at the moment of injury. It is not a verdict on what you are going through now or in the future, and definitely not a reason to feel you should be coping better. Mild TBI effects can last a lifetime.