About brain injury

An Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) is an injury caused to the brain since birth. There are many possible causes, including a fall, a road accident, tumour and stroke.

This section gives an overview of the brain, brain injury and the practical issues that can arise. You can read a description of the pages in this section below, and use the links on the left to visit the pages that interest you.

Much of the text is reproduced by kind permission of Trevor Powell from his book 'Head Injury - a practical guide'. You can buy it now from our online shop.

If you can't find what you are looking for or have any more questions, please contact our helpline.

In this section

Overview

• About the brain - Explore the different parts of the brain.

Types of brain injury

• Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) - If the head receives a severe blow or jolt, for example in an accident, fall or assault, the brain can be damaged. This is called TBI, and there is lots of information on the effects in this section.
• Other forms of Acquired Brain Injury (ABI) - An ABI is any brain injury that occurs since birth. There are many possible causes, including stroke, haemorrhage, infection, hypoxic/anoxic brain injury and medical accidents.

Effects

• Effects - Read all about the different symptoms of a brain injury, which may be cognitive, emotional, behavioural or physical.

Recovery

• Rehabilitation - Rehabilitation can help people to regain some of the skills that may have been affected by their brain injury, and to compensate for any skills that have been lost.

Living with brain injury

• Family reaction to brain injury - brain injury affects whole families, not just individuals.
• Practical issues - A brain injury can have a knock-on effect on other areas of day-to-day life. Find out about benefits, driving, returning to work, claiming compensation and our specialist travel insurance service.
• How can we help? - Headway's aim is to improve life after brain injury. Find out how we can help here.

More information

• Legal advice - Get advice and information to help you claim compensation after brain injury. This section includes Headway's 'Personal injury solicitors list', which gives you details of solicitors who have experience handling brain injury cases.
• Factsheets - Our factsheets cover a wide range of issues, from explanations of some of the symptoms to practical information. They are available to download here.
• Publications - An overview of our information booklets and selected books, plus links to our online shop.
• Common brain injury terms - There are lots of words and phrases used around brain injury that you may not have heard before. Find the meanings here.
• Useful organisations - A list of other organisations who offer information and services to people with a brain injury, their family and carers.
• Gwybodaeth yn Gymraeg / Welsh information - Mae'r adran hon yn rhoi trosolwg o'r ymennydd, anaf i'r ymennydd a'r materion ymarferol a all godi. This section gives an overview of the brain, brain injury and the practical issues that can arise.