TITLE

Do Brain Injuries Affect Women Differently?

DESCRIPTION

“In 1994, the National Football League formed a Committee on Mild Traumatic Brain Injury to study an alarming trend: Players were retiring early because of what seemed to be concussion-related problems, including persistent headaches, vertigo, cognitive impairment, personality changes, fatigue and difficulty performing ordinary daily activities. Around the same time, Eve Valera, then a Ph.D. student in clinical psychology at the University of Illinois, began to volunteer in a domestic-violence shelter and wondered how many of the women there might be experiencing comparable post-concussive symptoms as a result of head injuries inflicted by their partners.”

Valera’s findings indicate that many women who suffered “intimate partner violence” had in fact been diagnosed with Traumatic Brain Injury.  The article discusses several issues wherein funding for research for women with TBI has been minuscule compared with NFL football players and CTE.  The article discusses the research issues, funding, gender bias, and other issues on the topic.  This article can be of use in discussion of real world issues that Psychologists try to research.

SOURCE

New York Times, June 26, 2019, by Kim TIngely

LINK TO RESOURCE

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/26/magazine/do-brain-injuries-affect-women-differently-than-men.html

(Tiny URL)  http://tinyurl.com/y5bhnlmm

CLASS DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

•What are the symptoms of Traumatic Brain Injury?

•What are the symptoms of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy?

•What are the gender differences in how individuals come to be diagnosed with these problems?

•According to the article, what is the gender bias in research?  And how does this hinder further studies?