Litigation

Link between brain injury and suicide confirmed in football player

By Michael Kaplen

The New York Times reports today on evidence establishing a link between brain injury and suicide in a story entitled, ?In College Players, Suicide, Signs of Disease That Haunts the N.F.L.?

Award winning Times reporter, Alan Schwarz reports that physicians at the University of Boston who are working with the Sports Legacy Institute have determined that the brain of a 21 year old college football player that hung himself shows early signs of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a disease linked to depression and impulse control in NFL football players, two of whom also committed suicide in the past ten years.

These findings according to the Times, raises questions of how young football players may be at risk for the disease. "We don't know if it's a specific age, we don't know if it's a cumulative number of years of exposure to head trauma, we don't know what combination of hits to the head set this disease in motion," Dr. Stern said. "These are critical issues that need to be answered in order to help guide any dramatic policy changes and individual decisions down the road."

The link between concussions/traumatic brain injury and suicide comes as no surprise to me.  After reading this story, I went back to my extensive files on the medical literature concerning the consequences of traumatic brain damage and re-read the National Institute of Health consensus conference report on traumatic brain injury which was published in September 1999 in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). 

The consensus conference report clearly identifies the behavioral and social consequences that were exhibited by this young college player.  ?Mood disorders, personality changes, altered emotional control, depression and anxiety are also prevalent after TBI.  Social consequences of mild, moderate and severe TBI are many and serious including increased risk of suicide, divorce, chronic unemployment, economic strain and substance abuse.?

I am interested in hearing the reaction of the NFL to this important study and again demand that the league  reopen the files of players who suffer from traumatic brain injury and have wrongfully been denied NFL brain injury disability benefits.
 

Full post as published by Brain Injury News and Information on September 14, 2010 (boomark / email).