The topic on the issue of concussions is relevant because it is an issue that impacts millions of young and professional people who play sports. There are hundreds if not thousands of people who have been playing football since they were young, so knowing they have the chance to be impacted by a concussion is important in order to provide treatment and protection. Although many sports participants have never had a concussion, there are many people that play football who have and have been severely impacted by major head trauma. The purposes of this research is to identity and understand the physical impact that high impact sports have on people who participate. Football, soccer and boxing all have extremely high rates of head trauma, so the purpose of this paper is to first, get to a point where a person is able to diagnose what is the physical impact and long-term damage that happens to those that participate in these sports. Many medical and professional people are concerned about the physical and mental impacts that a person who seems normal, experiences after the sport. Issues like depression, anxiety and other mental problems are possibly linked to concussions in sport. This paper will research these issues to see the long-term impacts and second, offer possible solutions.

As has been shown in past research, the National Football League and other organizations like the South Eastern Conference are football crazed, and both organizations know about the physical and mental impacts of the sport. Since this is not new information, resources should be made available to those who participate in these sports and are at risk. Of course knowing the risks should be made clearer especially the long-term impacts of concussions, and along with some amount of money that is invested in this sport, resources should be made available to those that experience head trauma from sports like football specifically, but also other sports with the same risks. The resources that should be made available to the people who play should be in the form of treatment like weekly, monthly, or yearly tests, education and continual treatment after playing has finished. These proactive approaches can help cut down on the amount of concussions and hopefully provide treatment early to prevent major diseases like dementia and depression. Treatment and prevention are the two best approaches to still allow the sport to continue, while protecting the players and their health. 

The best way to understand the issue of concussions is to look at the research that has been done on the subject. The author of “Big Plays, Big Injuries” (2016) focuses her argument for an audience to be informed about the problems surrounding concussions. She uses a graphic story to draw the attention of the reader to the impact of concussions. Although she does not have any medical training, she is the vice president of a care management program, which helps diagnose and treat people who suffer from concussions. Her article is biased because she explains how she saw her own son suffer from a mild concussion, which can affect her judgment and reasoning for writing the article. The article “Big Plays Big Injuries” article is a reflection of how many parents and others feel when their children are participating in sports that have a high concussion rate and risk of the injury. The article mentions how widespread concussions are in sports and how most people do not recognize the crisis that is currently taking place when first getting a concussion. One reason concussions are widespread is because of the stigma of not wanting to report a concussion to avoid sitting out a game. According to Brad Wolverton (2015) of The Chronicle of Higher Education in the article titled, “In Football, Stigma of Concussion Creates Incentives to Hide It,” many doctors that work for large football organizations like the NFL or college football organizations use vague language or underreport the number of concussions as there is pressure to often get players to play. Programs that have a financial incentive to see players play, will often try to encourage players to think they do not have a concussion, so as to get the person back on the field. Star players that bring in revenue are pushed on the field to generate more money for the program. This shows how money, not safety or health of players is the root cause of avoiding reporting or claiming a concussion. 

One of the main contributing factors as to why concussions are so prevalent is a desire to underreport the experience of a concussion. According to Meier, Brummel, Singh and Nerio (2015) in the article, “The underreporting of self-reported symptoms following sports-related concussion” from the Journal Of Science And Medicine In Sport, many people are underreporting concussion like symptoms because of the risk of not playing and loosing money. The information in this text includes real life statistics and data on the numbers of people who get concussions, who feel like they have concussions, and ones who do not report concussion like symptoms. This explains why people who get concussions and do not report it because they do not want to be ruled out of being able to play.  The actual data and statistics that it presents shows how the information ties back into the whole concussion situation and brain trauma that people get from concussions; both long and short term. One of the reasons that underreporting takes place is a fear of lost revenue. This is leading to symptoms such as CTE and brain diseases that have had major effects on many people’s lives.

 These impacts are taking their toll on those that are not treated. According to Joe DeLamielleure (2015), the author of “Concussion in the National Football League: Viewpoint of an Elite Player” from the Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics, CTE is a brain disease caused by continuous hits to the head over periods of time. This is a disease that many football players suffer from. The article points out that a former NFL player who had CTE eventually committed suicide recently in 2012, mostly likely due to suffering from CTE. The author of this article Joe DeLamielleure (2015), happens to be a former NFL player, so this makes the information provided in the text very accurate because he has experienced what is going on and what is being researched as it relates to the NFL and brain trauma. The article by Joe DeLamielleure (2015) argues for helping out the situation of people suffering from traumatic brain injuries and also post-traumatic brain injuries, particularly for former and current professional players. He is writing this as a way to respond to the need of the players and also to let people know there is help available to those in need that are experiencing these problems. 

However, even when a person is thought to have a concussion there are still problems with treatment and recovery. In “A Heads-Up on Traumatic Brain Injuries in Sports,” the author is pointing out that many people do not have much knowledge about the long-term impact of concussions. These impacts include major brain trauma and damage that can have a major impact on life quality in the future. The damage that repeated concussions have on a person are still being researched, so the best way to prevent major damage is through education. As shown in the article by Groce and Urankar (2016), “Evaluating and Treating Concussions,” there needs to be a standard policy that can be used to identify those symptoms that indicate a concussion or major brain trauma. This text gives an explanation of how to correctly evaluate and treat concussions and it provides the best practices to medical professionals. Also the article provides techniques to give best the approaches to treating concussions. While learning how to evaluate concussions, the optimum goal is to improve treatment across the medical field on concussions. This article provides medical professionals with concrete approaches to actually treating concussions. Since it is so difficult to identify those symptoms that reveal a concussion, people who work with athletes need to have specific guidelines that are accurate and helpful in being able to make sure that athletes are getting the best treatment early and as often as possible. Given this current situation, treatment and prevention are two of the better ways to limit the long-term consequences of concussions. 

           Figuring out which treatment is best is always a challenge. There is no shortage of research that has been done on concussions in sports. along with recent documentaries like League of Denial presented through PBS’s Frontline and even the recent Will Smith movie Concussion, which was inspired by the documentary, more and more people are becoming interested and taking a greater notice of the physical impacts that are happening to those that play contact sports like football, soccer and boxing. The reason that football has gained such attention in recent years is because the sport has always been such a draw for millions of people. The NFL, Monday Night Football and the yearly Super Bowl draw millions of viewers each year to watch what has been seen by many as America’s sport. The issue that has come is the fact that people are starting to see that this sport is creating more dangers and putting lives at risk, with many athletes not receiving proper treatment or any treatment.

            Research has revealed that the rate of concussions in sports like football is on the rise and researchers have argued that this is due to the improved training techniques of athletes that have made participants stronger and faster, making hits and collisions even more damaging (Groce and Urankar 26). A traumatic brain injury is one that involves the brain experiencing a physically damaging experience where the brain is impacted in ways that are not always visible. What researchers have found and what was discussed in the film League of Denial, was that players who had experienced severe brain trauma had brains that on the outside looked normal. It was only after string review and analysis of the brain did doctors see that what players were experiencing after years of severe brain trauma was a condition known as encephalopathy. Encephalopathy is a general term used to describe the damage to a brain that leads to various physical conditions. Affecting nearly two hundred thousand people a year, those that have done research with athletes argue that every football player may have some form of the disease (DeLamielleure 133), depending on the level and amount of brain trauma that has happened over the course of a lifetime. Such common symptoms of encephalopathy can range from forgetfulness or loss of long-term memory to depression and even certain types of mental psychosis (Hodge and Kadoo 160).

            What is concerning about this situation is the number of people that participate in physical contact sports like football. Football remains one of the most popular youth sports and with the average player taking 1200 hits a year (Simington 1), there needs to be more treatment that is present early on and that it is given to prevent the types of outcomes of severe brain trauma like encephalopathy. As was discussed in various articles, there has often been difficulty in diagnosing concussions because many medical professionals have difficulty in identifying the symptoms that are signs of concussions. Of course there needs to be better training and preparedness to help treat people with concussions as well help to identify concussions. As there has been many recent articles that have shown that many athletes, both at the college and professional levels often try to minimize showing any signs of weakness, including concussions (Meier, Brummel, Singh, Nerio 509), as there is a fear that if reported, then a loss of playing time, which can result in those who may lose a scholarship opportunity or even lose the opportunity to make money at the professional level, these are real risks that prevent athletes from helping medical professionals in identifying those symptoms that can have major impacts on the physical and mental well-being of the athlete (Wolverton 73). This means that athletes not only have to be better educated as to the huge risks they take by underreporting a concussion, but also he presence of medical professionals at all levels of sports to help identify, minimize and treat any signs of concussions on players (Pilon and Belson).

            Professional athletes already have access to some of the best medical treatment around, but underreporting is not the only problem. As was shown in League of Denial, medical professionals from the National Football League concluded that football was responsible for the major mental and physical problems experienced by current and former players (Fainaru-Wada). This information was never made public and instead of treating and analyzing all players, the National Football League decided to keep the information secret. This more than likely led to more brain traumas, but what is important to realize is that there are still players that are experiencing signs of encephalopathy and do not realize it. Research has shown that because of the impacts experienced by players and the hundreds of thousands people that play the sport, there is a need to regulate and standardize the treatment that should be given to players so that the health and well-being of the person is put first (Groce and Urankar 14).

           The problem is that in business, money is sometimes more important than people. The current attitude at both the college and professional levels of football is that the players are to be taken care of just good enough so that they can continue to work and perform on the football field and earn money for schools and professional organizations. Like slaves of the past, as long as the player is functional for the specific job assigned, it will do. As the film League of Denial showed, the NFL knew for years that mental problems and physical issues were caused by concussions, but instead of telling the players, the NFL said nothing. The health of the player is not that important, especially those issues that come later on after retirement. However, since research has shown that the impacts of the sport start early and that treatment can help to minimize or even prevent severe and reversible damage, then the way to help athletes is to provide treatment. Colleges and professional teams should be required to provide treatments, brain scans and rehabilitation to players experiencing effects that may be the result of brain trauma. 

            Standard medical treatment must be present throughout the entire athletic experience. Athletes must be encouraged to take the larger view of the situation and see how their health in the long-term is more important and should always be at the center of what they do. Schools and the National Football League need to do better when it comes to educating players and showing that health and well-being is important and they are not simply people that are to make money for the school or the team or organization. What is important is that treatment needs to be often and regular. Athletes should be able to get scans, perform mental exercises and take those preventative measures that can help the athlete recover from a traumatic brain injury. The duty of the organizations that benefit from the labor of athletes is to take care of the athletes and to ensure their health is always being taken care of so that each athlete can perform and remain physically and mentally healthy. 

 

 

 

 