People who sustain a head injury through concussion are three times more likely to attempt suicide later in life, a new study says.

Researchers at the University of Toronto in Canada examined the potential impact of concussions on the mental health of individuals, especially those who are professional athletes or military servicemen.

Their goal is to explore how this traumatic brain injury is connected with the occurrence of depression in people working in such fields.

The team discovered that people who sustain even one concussion early in life can experience threefold increase in their risk of suicide later on. The risk is raised further if the person sustains the head injury over a weekend rather than during a weekday.

This suggests that concussions received through recreational activities are more dangerous in the long run compared to those received while on the job.

Concussions And Suicide Risk

Donald Redelmeier, a researcher from the University of Toronto and one of the authors of the study, explained that many of the patients he encounters are not elite athletes but rather middle-aged adults.

He said that most of his patients sustain their injury through accidents in their everyday life, such as getting into a vehicular crash or falling down a flight of stairs, and not through playing football.

In their study, Redelmeier and his colleagues focused on the concussion risks related to non-sporting activities. They identified close to a quarter of a million adult Canadians living in Ontario who sustained mild concussions over the past 20 years and monitored them for deaths related to suicide.

The researchers found that more than 660 of these individuals committed suicide. This translates to about 31 deaths for every 100,000 patients every year, a figure that is three times the population norm in the country.

Most of the suicides related to the concussion patients happened about six years after they sustained the head injury. The suicide risk was not connected to any prior psychiatric conditions or certain demographics, and it significantly increased the more concussions the patients sustained throughout their lives.

People who received concussion during a weekend were four times more likely to commit suicide compared to the norm.

While the researchers are still unsure as why weekend concussions result in an increased risk, they suspect that this could be because medical staffs are often unavailable during weekends or that the patients themselves choose not to seek care for their injury immediately.

Possible Explanations For The Increased Suicide Risk

Redelmeier pointed out that concussions may serve as markers but are not necessarily mechanisms of troubles later in the patient’s life. This means that people who sustain a concussion may already have baselines issues that can cause them to experience a higher risk for depression and suicide.

Another possible explanation for the increased suicide risk is that concussions also cause inflammations in the patient’s brain, which is something that may not fully heal.

Redelmeier said that concussed individuals also tend to limit their recovery time in their rush to resume their daily activities. This can cause a significant strain that can lead to patients feeling frustrated or disappointed, which in turn can result in depression and suicide.

The findings of the University of Toronto study are featured in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.

Photo: Army Medicine | Flickr