How does TBI relate to Mental Illnesses? If we ask any person with a permanent disability how they became incapacitated, the answer that we will likely receive is traumatic brain injury (TBI). As a frequent volunteer at a hospital’s rehabilitation center, I often notice that many patients receive rehabilitation services to improve their function and quality of life have suffered head trauma. As an avid rugby fan, I realize that in contact sports, athletes often suffer from head injuries and can be absent from several games, depending on the severity of their injury. Recently, I have also become aware of mental illnesses that persist in some individuals long after they sustained the injury. Although I understand that head trauma can be related
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I recall reading news headlines that have called these players out because of their sometimes violent behavior both on and off of the playing field. Curious about how contact sports athletes are more susceptible to developing mental illnesses, I typed “head trauma” and “mental illness in contact sports athletes” into my search engine, which brought me upon a certain disease I had never heard of before: Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE). Intrigued, I decided to search the FIU Library database. One of the first results was titled, “Fatal Flaws: How a Misfolded Protein Baffled Scientists and Changed the Way We Look at the Brain” by Jay Ingram, a Canadian scientist and author. In his book, Ingram explains that CTE gradually creates memory loss, hostility, depression and drug addiction. Ingram even went so far as to say that once CTE has started, it continues to spread, and never ceases, much like dementia or Alzheimer’s disease (235). In his publication, Ingram states that both athletes and normal individuals alike are prone to Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. The cause is accumulations of a specific protein in the brain, causing it to slowly deteriorate, therefore creating CTE. The speed at which CTE infects a person is determined by one factor: repeated head injury
I recall reading news headlines that have called these players out because of their sometimes violent behavior both on and off of the playing field. Curious about how contact sports athletes are more susceptible to developing mental illnesses, I typed “head trauma” and “mental illness in contact sports athletes” into my search engine, which brought me upon a certain disease I had never heard of before: Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE). Intrigued, I decided to search the FIU Library database. One of the first results was titled, “Fatal Flaws: How a Misfolded Protein Baffled Scientists and Changed the Way We Look at the Brain” by Jay Ingram, a Canadian scientist and author. In his book, Ingram explains that CTE gradually creates memory loss, hostility, depression and drug addiction. Ingram even went so far as to say that once CTE has started, it continues to spread, and never ceases, much like dementia or Alzheimer’s disease (235). In his publication, Ingram states that both athletes and normal individuals alike are prone to Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy. The cause is accumulations of a specific protein in the brain, causing it to slowly deteriorate, therefore creating CTE. The speed at which CTE infects a person is determined by one factor: repeated head injury