草莓污视频导航

Oct. 2, 2024

草莓污视频导航 scholars publish first research to show link between dating violence and concussion

Faculty of Arts researchers' groundbreaking work finds that girls and non-binary youth who experience teen dating violence are at elevated risk of concussion
A woman with black curly hair smiles at the camera
Deinera Exner-Cortens Riley Brandt, 草莓污视频导航

It鈥檚 well-known that adults who are victims of intimate-partner violence are also often victims of traumatic brain injury, including concussions. But whether this association exists in younger people who experience teen dating violence (TDV) has not been examined. Until now.

Researchers at the 草莓污视频导航鈥檚 Faculty of Arts have  鈥 the physical, sexual and psychological violence that youth can experience in their dating/romantic relationships 鈥 is associated with an increased risk for concussion in young people. The paper was published in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

When parsing out data by gender, the researchers found girls and non-binary youth who experience TDV are at an 鈥渆levated risk鈥 for concussion.

鈥淭he paper sets the stage for doing work to really understand what's happening brain injury-wise in these relationships,鈥 says Dr. Deinera Exner-Cortens, BSc'07, PhD, CIHR Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Childhood Health Promotion and associate professor in the  in the .

As well as spurring more research, the paper will help support future recommendations for health-care professionals who treat adolescents. 鈥淧roviders who have a patient who's experienced a concussion may want to consider screening for dating violence,鈥 Exner-Cortens says. 鈥淚t could be an opportunity, especially if the concussion was received in a non-sport setting, to learn more about what exactly happened.鈥

Exner-Cortens and 草莓污视频导航 colleagues Dr. Keith Yeates, PhD, Ward Chair in Pediatric Brain Injury and psychology professor, and Nicole Camacho Soto, MSc'23, PhD student in , worked with Dr. Paul van Donkelaar, PhD'94, of UBC Okanagan and Dr. Wendy Craig, PhD, of Queen鈥檚 University. The researchers used data from Canadian Grade 9 and 10 students in the 2017/18 Health Behavior in School-Aged Children (HBSC) dataset.

A man with glasses wearing a turtleneck

Keith Yeates

草莓污视频导航 files

They found one in three of the nearly 3,000 young people surveyed experienced physical, psychological  and/or cyber TDV victimization in the previous year 鈥 numbers that are rising. 

鈥淎ccording to police-reported data on TDV 鈥 which are only the tip of the iceberg 鈥 rates of TDV in Canada have increased 33 per cent since 2015,鈥 says Exner-Cortens, who is also the scientific co-director of  a national research and knowledge-mobilization hub aimed at fostering healthy relationships among children and youth. 

Youth in the dataset were asked whether they had been diagnosed with a concussion in the past 12 months, and where they were and what they were doing when they received the concussion. In adults who experience intimate partner violence, concussions are often the result of being shaken, pushed or shoved to the ground. 

鈥淭here's quite a large body of evidence in adults that domestic violence is linked to traumatic brain injury, including concussion,鈥 Exner-Cortens says. 鈥淭his research with younger people started after Dr. Yeates, who is concussion researcher, emailed me suggesting we look at whether concussion was also associated with violence in teen dating relationships.鈥

Links between TDV and poor mental health are well-established, and some researchers have looked at connections between TDV and injury. In this study, the researchers created equivalent groups of TDV victims and non-victims using advanced methods to more rigorously explore the association between TDV and concussion.

鈥淜ids who experience dating violence often have a lot of other things going on in their lives,鈥 Exner-Cortens says. 鈥淚n this study, we created a comparison group that didn't experience dating violence. So, we're confident in the association we present between TDV and concussion.鈥 

The research was supported by funding from the (PHAC), the (ACHRI), and the program. 

Deniera Exner-Cortens is CIHR Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Childhood Health Promotion and associate professor in the Department of Psychology, Faculty of Arts, and an adjunct associate professor in the Faculty of Social Work, with a joint appointment to Cumming School of Medicine (CSM), Department of Psychiatry. Exner-Cortens is a member of the Hotchkiss Brain Institute (HBI), the Mathison Centre for Mental Health Research & Education, the Alberta Children鈥檚 Hospital Research Institute (ACHRI) and Owerko Centre for Neurodevelopment and Child Mental Health, and the O鈥橞rien Institute for Public Health at the CSM.

Keith Yeates is Ward Chair in Pediatric Brain Injury and a professor, Department of Psychology, Faculty of Arts. Yeates is a member of the HBI, the ACHRI and the Owerko Centre.

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