What Is TBI Awareness Month About?

TBI Awareness is the national push every March to help people understand what a traumatic brain injury actually is, how often one goes undiagnosed, and why catching the symptoms of a TBI early can change everything that comes after. For someone in Raleigh who just walked away from a car crash, a fall at work, or a hit on the head that "wasn't that bad," brain injury awareness is the reason to pay attention to what your body is telling you in the days after.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, around 2.8 million Americans sustain a traumatic brain injury each year. A huge number of them never set foot in an Emergency Room. They go home, sleep it off, and chalk up the headaches, the brain fog, and the short fuse to stress. By the time the diagnosis comes, weeks have passed and the medical record has a hole in it.

What Is a Traumatic Brain Injury?

A traumatic brain injury is damage to brain tissue caused by an outside force. A car crash. A fall. Blunt trauma to the head. A jolt strong enough to make the brain move inside the skull. The skin does not have to break. The skull does not have to crack. The brain tissue just has to take the hit.

Doctors usually sort TBIs into three categories. A mild traumatic brain injury, which most people call a concussion, is the most common. A moderate TBI involves longer loss of consciousness and clearer changes on imaging. A severe TBI means extended unconsciousness, major damage to brain function, or both.

The word "mild" is misleading. A mild TBI can change how a person thinks, sleeps, and behaves for months. Some never fully recover. The label refers to the initial presentation, not the long-term cost.

Why Is Brain Injury Awareness Month Recognized Every March?

The Brain Injury Association of America runs Brain Injury Awareness Month every March to push three ideas into public conversation. Brain injuries are more common than people think. They are routinely missed. And brain injury survivors often live with the consequences in silence because the injury is invisible.

The campaign also invites people to share your story through the Brain Injury Association of America's My Brain Injury Journey platform, which has built a national brain injury community of survivors, caregivers, and families. The National Brain Injury Information Center, run by the same organization, offers free resources to anyone trying to understand what happened to them or a loved one.

For drivers and workers in Raleigh, the awareness piece matters because the most common causes of TBI in North Carolina, motor vehicle crashes, falls, and workplace accidents, are also the ones where victims most often tell the Emergency Room they feel fine and go home.

How Do Motor Vehicle Crashes Cause Traumatic Brain Injuries?

A head does not have to hit anything to suffer a brain injury in a car crash. The crash itself is enough.

When a vehicle stops suddenly, the brain keeps moving inside the skull for a fraction of a second longer. That movement stretches nerve fibers and bruises brain tissue. Doctors call this a coup-contrecoup injury when the brain strikes the front and back of the skull. They call it diffuse axonal injury when the twisting motion shears nerve cells across wide areas of the brain.

Rear-end collisions on I-440. T-bone crashes at intersections off Capital Boulevard. Highway pileups on I-40. None of them require a head striking a window to cause a traumatic brain injury. A whiplash crash at 25 mph can do it.

That is the part most Raleigh drivers do not realize until weeks later, when the headaches will not stop and the words will not come.

What Are the Most Common Causes of TBI in North Carolina?

The same handful of incidents account for most traumatic brain injuries seen in North Carolina hospitals. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tracks the same patterns nationally.

• Motor vehicle crashes: High-speed collisions on I-40, I-85, and I-440 produce the kind of rapid deceleration that causes diffuse axonal injury, even when airbags deploy correctly.
• Falls: Slips on wet floors, falls from ladders, and falls from heights at construction sites are the leading cause of TBI in adults over 65 and a major cause across every age group.
• Workplace accidents: Construction, warehouse, and manufacturing jobs across Wake County put workers around heavy equipment, falling objects, and elevated work surfaces every day.
• Pedestrian and bicycle crashes: A vehicle striking a person on foot or on a bike often drives the head into the pavement, producing severe TBI even at low speeds.
• Sports injuries: Youth football, soccer, and cycling produce concussions that go unreported because the athlete wants to stay in the game.
• Combat-related blast trauma: Service members returning to North Carolina from Fort Liberty and other military installations carry one of the highest rates of TBI of any group in the country.

In every one of these, the same pattern repeats. The injured person feels stunned, then "okay," then walks away. The TBI shows up later.

What Are the Symptoms of a TBI After an Accident?

Most symptoms of a TBI do not appear at the scene. They build over hours and days. The brain takes time to swell, and the inflammation drives most of what victims actually feel.

Watch for these in the 72 hours after any blow to the head or any crash hard enough to shake you:

• Persistent or worsening headache: A headache that gets worse instead of better in the days after a crash is one of the most reliable signs of a brain injury.
• Nausea or vomiting: Especially when it shows up hours after the accident rather than at the scene.
• Confusion or memory gaps: Trouble remembering the crash itself, the hours before, or simple things like a phone number.
• Sensitivity to light or sound: Rooms feel too bright. Normal conversation feels too loud. Driving at night becomes overwhelming.
• Mood and mental health changes: Sudden irritability, anxiety, depression, or flat emotional response in someone who was not like that before the accident.
• Sleep changes: Sleeping far more than usual, sleeping far less, or waking up unable to think clearly.
• Slurred speech or trouble finding words: Reaching for a common word and coming up empty is a red flag that brain function is not working the way it should.
• Movement disorders: Balance problems, dizziness, tremors, or a sense that the body is not responding the way it used to.

Any one of these in the days after an accident is a reason to get medical attention. Two or more together is a reason to go now.

Why Do So Many TBIs Get Missed in the Emergency Room?

This is the piece Brain Injury Awareness Month exists to fix.

A standard CT scan at the Emergency Room catches bleeding and skull fractures. It does not catch most concussions or diffuse axonal injuries, because those involve damage at a cellular level inside the brain tissue that does not show up on the scan. The patient gets told the imaging looks fine, gets sent home, and reasonably assumes there is no brain injury.

Then the symptoms hit. By that point, the medical record reads "no acute findings," which insurance companies use to argue the brain injury was not real or did not come from the accident.

A follow-up with a primary care doctor, a neurologist, or a concussion specialist within a week of any head injury changes that record. A proper neurological exam tests memory, balance, reflexes, and cognition in ways a CT cannot. It also catches problems early, when treatment works best.

Can a Concussion Be a Permanent Injury?

Yes. The medical community used to treat concussion as a transient injury that always resolved on its own. The research has moved.

Post-concussion syndrome can last months or years. Symptoms include chronic headaches, memory problems, difficulty concentrating, mental health changes like depression and anxiety, sleep disorders, and lingering movement disorders. Repeat concussions stack the risk of long-term cognitive decline, including chronic traumatic encephalopathy.

For a Raleigh worker who needs to think clearly to do their job, or a driver whose reaction time matters every day, a concussion that does not resolve is a permanent change to daily life. That is part of what a personal injury claim or workers' compensation claim is meant to cover.

How Does a TBI Affect a Personal Injury or Workers' Compensation Claim?

A traumatic brain injury changes the value and the complexity of a claim in ways most accident victims do not expect.

Medical costs run high and run long. Imaging, neurological exam appointments, cognitive therapy, mental health treatment, vocational rehabilitation, and medication can stretch across years. Lost wages add up when a survivor cannot return to the same job at the same level. Pain and suffering damages account for the cognitive, emotional, and personal losses that come with a brain injury.

For workers injured on the job in North Carolina, workers' compensation covers medical treatment and a portion of lost wages, but proving the long-term effects of a TBI takes documentation most claims never get. For drivers, North Carolina's contributory negligence rule means the insurance company will look for any sliver of fault to deny the claim entirely.

A personal injury lawyer in Raleigh who handles TBI cases knows which specialists document the injury in language that holds up, which records connect the symptoms of a TBI to the accident, and how to fight the insurance arguments that brain injuries are exaggerated or unrelated.

What Should You Do If You Suspect a Brain Injury After a Raleigh Accident?

Three things, in order.

Get medical attention today, not next week. Go to the Emergency Room if symptoms are severe, or to urgent care if they are mild but real. Tell the doctor every symptom you have noticed, even the ones that feel small. Ask specifically about a concussion evaluation and a neurological exam. Imaging that comes back clean does not rule out a TBI, and your record needs to reflect what you are actually experiencing.

Write down the symptoms as they happen. Date them. A simple note on your phone every time a headache hits, every time you forget something, every time the words will not come, builds the kind of timeline that wins claims. Many brain injury survivors find that this kind of journal also helps when they later decide to share your story through the brain injury community or in court.

Talk to a traumatic brain injury lawyer in Raleigh before you talk to the insurance company about anything beyond reporting the accident. Brain injury claims are the ones insurance carriers fight hardest, because the cost of a real TBI is high and the symptoms are invisible.

Talk to Our Raleigh Personal Injury Lawyers About Your Brain Injury

A traumatic brain injury is not something to wait out. The Law Offices of John M. McCabe handles brain injury cases for drivers and workers across Raleigh and the surrounding North Carolina communities. Call today for a free consultation before the insurance company decides what your injury is worth.