In a recent Psychiatric Times article, Dr. Ricardo E, Jorge professor of psychiatry at the University of Iowa, illuminated the impact of reintegrating Traumatic Brain Injury patients back into society. Consideration needs to be taken concerning their cognition and behavioral changes which constitutes the majority of TBI disabilities. In a control group of 939 TBI patients and 2,817 doctors a comparison was made between the effects of mental illnesses in those with moderate to severe and mild TBI. It was found that the prevalence of psychiatric illness in the first year following a moderate to severe TBI was 49 percent and those with a mild TBI experienced mental illness 34 percent of the time. What this means is that patients with moderate to severe TBI are 4 times more likely than the general population to develop a psychiatric illness in the six months following their injury. A discouraging 61 percent of those evaluated eight years after sustaining a TBI suffered from major depression and anxiety disorders, a significant amount more than those in the control group. Along with the increased number of mood disorders in TBI patients, researchers also found structural and/or functional alternations in the prefrontal cortex of the brain, indicating that structural brain damage plays a large part in psychiatric illness. Furthermore, not only does the TBI-caused damage to the prefrontal regions and limbic structures initiate mood disorders, but the disturbed neural circuits often continue to wreak havoc in the brain causing the illness to progress and evolve over time. As discouraging as this information is it helps create an increased awareness of the severity of this nationwide epidemic and will perhaps save a number of potential victims who instead chose to wear something as simple as a helmet.