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:

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

Common symptoms of brain injury are:

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.