The Brain Injury Association of America leads the nation in observing Brain Injury Awareness Month in March each year. The theme for the 2021 to 2023 campaign is More Than My Brain Injury.

If you know someone who is living with brain injury – or if you have one yourself – you know that brain injury is not an event or an outcome. It’s the start of a misunderstood, misdiagnosed, underfunded neurological disease. Join the #MoreThanMyBrainInjury campaign and help educate others about what it’s like to live with a brain injury.

We want everyone, everywhere to join us in:

• Increasing understanding of brain injury as a chronic condition
• Reducing the stigma associated with having a brain injury
• Showcasing the diversity of injury and the demographics of the community
• Improving care and support for individuals with brain injury and their families

Learn more about brain injuries with books and movies in the library catalog and by visiting The Brain Injury Association of America, The Brain Injury Association of Illinois, Mayo Clinic’s Traumatic Brain Injury page, and Six Things You Need to Know about Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy from Brainline.

Prognosis: A Memoir of My Brain by Sarah Vallance

When Vallance is thrown from a horse and suffers a jarring blow to the head, she believes she’s walked away unscathed, but she’s suffered a traumatic brain injury. In this highly intimate account of devastation and renewal, Sarah pulls back the curtain on life with traumatic brain injury.

He Never Liked Cake by Janna Leyde

Janna Leyde’s coming-of-age memoir encompasses the acute and lasting effects of traumatic brain injury on both survivors and their loved ones.

Trigger by Susan Vaught

Teenager Jersey Hatch must work through his extensive brain damage to figure out why he decided to shoot himself.

Stuck in Neutral by Terry Trueman

Fourteen-year-old Shawn McDaniel, who suffers from severe cerebral palsy and cannot function, relates his perceptions of his life, his family, and his condition, especially as he believes his father is planning to kill him.

Traumatic Brain Injury: From Concussion to Coma by Connie Goldsmith

Discusses the prevalence of traumatic brain injury, including its aftereffects, the many different kinds of TBIs, and famous TBI sufferers.

The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Recovery by Barbara Lipska

In 2015, Barbara Lipska, a leading expert on neuroscience of mental illness, was diagnosed with melanoma that had spread to her brain. Lipska returned to normal, but she remembers the experience with exquisite clarity. She describes her ordeal and its lessons about the mind and brain and how mental illness, brain injury, and age can change behavior, personality, cognition, and memory.

The Brain’s Way of Healing by Norman Doidge

For centuries it was believed that the brain’s complexity prevented recovery from damage or disease. The Brain’s Way of Healing shows that this very sophistication is the source of a unique kind of healing.

Gabby by Gabrielle Giffords

Congresswoman Giffords and her astronaut husband recount her early years, their marriage, the assassination attempt that left her gravely wounded and took the lives of six others, and her rehabilitation.

My Stroke of Insight: a Brain Scientist’s Personal Journey by Jill Bolte

On the morning of December 10, 1996, Taylor, a brain scientist, experienced a massive stroke. She observed her own mind completely deteriorate. Now she shares her unique perspective on the brain and its capacity for recovery.

Concussions and Our Kids: America’s Leading Expert on How to Protect Young Athletes and Keep Sports Safe by Robert Cantu

From America’s preeminent expert on the head trauma crisis in sports, a timely, provocative, essential guide to concussions in youth sports, what they are, how to protect our young athletes.

Concussion

A dramatic thriller based on the incredible true David v. Goliath story of American immigrant Dr. Bennet Omalu, the brilliant forensic neuropathologist who made the first discovery of CTE, a football-related brain trauma, in a pro player and fought for the truth to be known.