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Brain Injury

There are more than 300 different labels that are commonly used to describe brain-injured children. The vast majority of these labels are not proper diagnoses, but rather they are descriptions of the symptoms of brain injury.

A proper diagnosis describes where the injury exists in the brain, the degree of the injury to the brain, and the extent of the injury to the brain.

Using symptoms in place of a proper diagnosis almost invariably leads to the attempt to treat those symptoms rather than the brain, where the child is actually injured.

This does not work.

To be successful one must treat the brain, where the injury actually exists.

Some of the labels commonly used to describe brain-injured children are:

Aphasia	Hyperactive
Ataxia	Learning Problems
Athetoid	Mentally Deficient
Attention Deficit Disorder	Mentally Retarded
Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder	Persistent Vegetative State
Autistic	Pervasive Developmental Disorder
Cerebral Palsy	Reading Problems
Developmental Delay	Retarded
Down Syndrome	Spastic
Dyslexic	Special Needs Child
Educable	Trainable
Emotionally Disturbed	Untrainable
Epileptic

None of the above descriptions are proper diagnoses, but are descriptions of the results of brain injury.

Common symptoms of brain injury are:

Auditory Hypersensitivity	Inability to understand words
Blindness	Inability to walk
Coma	Inability to write
Deafness	Inappropriate behavior
Feeding problems	Learning problems
Hearing problems	Poor attention span
Hyperactivity	Respiratory problems
Inability to crawl	Runs poorly
Inability to creep	Seizures
Inability to make sounds	Sensory problems
Inability to move	Sleeping problems
Inability to read	Strabismus
Inability to read at grade level	Tactile problems
Inability to run	Talks poorly
Inability to sit up	Temper trantrums
Inability to speak	Visual problems
Inability to stand	Walks poorly
Inability to understand equal to peers	Writes poorly

Functional Diagnosis

It is necessary to determine which area of the brain is hurt, to what degree the area is injured and to what extent. After a careful neurological evaluation a child may be diagnosed as having a "severe (degree), diffuse (extent), bilateral (both hemispheres of the brain), cortical (area) injury". The old-fashioned symptomatic labels used to describe such a child might be "mentally retarded", "epileptic", "spastic", "hyperactive", "emotionally disturbed", or others.

These old-fashioned labels are not found in the literature of The Institutes but rather the term "brain-injured". This refers to the entire spectrum of brain injury from profound coma to mild learning problems and every kind and degree of brain injury in between.