Sarah Raskin, Trinity College – Brain Injuries Aren’t Just Happening in Sports

It’s not just athletes who have to worry about brain injuries.

Sarah Raskin, Charles A. Dana professor of psychology and neuroscience at Trinity College, details other areas of life that are sadly involved in these afflictions as well.

Sarah A. Raskin, Ph.D. is a Board Certified Clinical Neuropsychologist and the Charles A. Dana Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut.  She received her BA in Behavioral Biology from Johns Hopkins University and her PhD in Neuropsychology from the City University of New York Graduate Center.  She is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association (Divisions 22 Rehabilitation and 40 Neuropsychology) and of the National Academy of Neuropsychology.  She has published numerous articles investigating neuropsychological functions and cognitive rehabilitation for a variety of disorders, including brain injury.    She co-authored the Memory for Intentions Test (MIST) published by Psychological Assessment Resources.  She is co-author with Catherine Mateer of Neuropsychological Management of Mild Traumatic Brain Injury, published by Oxford University Press (2000) and is the editor of Neuroplasticity and Rehabilitation, published by Guilford Press (2011) and Prospective Memory in Clinical Populations, published by Taylor and Francis (2020).

Brain injuries aren’t just happening in sports

Rates of brain injury in athletes have received increased attention in recent years.  Less often discussed is the possibility for women to receive a brain injury as a result of domestic or interpersonal violence.

In cases of domestic violence, the part of the body most often struck is the head and neck.  Unexplained head and neck injuries are considered a warning sign of interpersonal violence.   In addition about half of survivors say that they have been strangled, often multiple times.  Taken together this suggests it is possible that women who experience interpersonal violence also experience brain trauma.

So we wanted to see if women who experienced interpersonal violence might show changes on tests of attention, memory, and the ability to plan and problem-solve, consistent with brain injury survivors.

Our research found that women who had suffered from interpersonal violence exhibited high rates of potential brain injuries—95% had a positive screening test. 

We compared them to a group of women who had not experienced any violence, and a group of women who had experienced sexual assault but no blow to the head or strangulation.  The interpersonal violence survivors showed the lowest ability to learn new information and to think flexibly—skills that would be essential for escaping from a dangerous situation. 

Morever, those who had been strangled were even worse on these measures than women who had not been strangled.  Many of the women in our study also experienced depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder, but these changes were separable from the cognitive changes.

We hope that this research can lead to more domestic violence professionals screening for brain injury, and more brain injury professionals screening for domestic violence. 

Read More:
[Taylor & Francis Online] – Traumatic brain injury screening and neuropsychological functioning in women who experience intimate partner violence
[Medium] – Davine
National Domestic Violence Hotline