Source: ABC News Online

A new report has found that a dramatic increase in assaults has led to a rise in the number of Australians with a traumatic brain injury.

Advocate group Brain Injury Australia (BIA) says more than 3,000 Australians suffer an assault-related brain injury each year.

Young people, infants and women are the most likely to be brain injury victims with the risk for Indigenous women 70 times that of other women.

BIA executive officer Nick Rushworth says brain injury is ten times more common than spinal injury and on average three times as disabling.

"What makes brain injury different from any injury to any other part of the body is that it is not only the seat of your thinking but it is the seat of your personality," he said.

"So it can effect everything from short term memory right through to behaviour.

"The cost of that not only for the individual but on carers family and the broader community is huge."