NEWS in SCIENCE
How much does you know about brain injuries?
By K.B.
How much does the population know about brain injuries? 3.8 billion people get brain injuries every year in the United States. A recent study suggests improving awareness level could be helpful. Providing more education for higher need areas could be the first step.
In this study, most respondents knew about symptoms and treatments of concussions. People who had past concussions or knew someone who had, had the best knowledge. Respondents knew the most about cognitive symptoms, but the least about mental health symptoms. Mental health symptoms include being nervous, anxious, depressed, or irritated. Cognitive symptoms include confusion and memory loss. 20-30% of patients had symptoms 6 months after a brain injury. Many patients don’t know to seek help after an injury. This could be since they don’t know what the symptoms are. Better education about brain injuries could decrease the chance of more injuries.
Around 80% of participants could answer general questions about brain injuries. The people that didn’t know seemed to fall in to similar groups. This included young people, low income and low education level respondents. They didn’t have access to resources. Non-English speaking and those without brain injury background didn’t do well also. It was shown that those involved in athletics needed to improve in awareness level.
Designing a program to help is necessary. Providing more resources to those could be where to start. This could make people more aware of what brain injuries are. Teaching their symptoms, causes, and treatments could prevent future brain injuries. It could also help push people to seek help for symptoms that happen after injury. It would be helpful to those involved in athletics where brain injuries occur often. (278)
Cusimano, M. D., Zhang, S., Topolovec-Vranic, J., Hutchison, M. G., & Jing, R. (2017, March 08). Factors affecting the concussion knowledge of athletes, parents, coaches, and medical professionals. Retrieved September 17, 2017 https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28540042
Please send any questions or comments to Dr. Spitzer (spitzern@marshall.edu )
Note: Any opinions expressed in these articles are those of the individual authors, and do not necessarily represent those of Dr. Spitzer, the Department of Biological Sciences, or Marshall University.