Traumatic brain injuries, specifically concussions, frequently occur in contact sports and may result in devastating effects on the cognitive ability and mental health of the athlete. This brain damage can cause down-regulation of the brain’s metabolism (hypometabolism), resulting in reduced grey matter, which can cause symptoms such as: depression, emotional regulation difficulties and confusion. Less well-studied are the emotional deficits associated with concussions. Soccer is not usually thought of as a sport with a high risk of concussions, yet studies have shown that the risk of concussion is significant at the collegiate and professional level. The NCAA has a specific concussion protocol with guidelines for pre and post-concussion treatment and testing. When collegiate student athletes are freshman they are required to undergo baseline testing using the ImPact test, however, within concussion testing there is a lack of a thorough emotional test to determine if the athlete has any emotional deficits. This could lead to athletes being allowed to return to play with the potential health risks. Our study examines male and female college soccer players from Universities along the east coast and Tennessee to investigate emotional deficits due to their last sports related injury using a survey consisting of questions from the DERS and Beck Depression Inventory as well as compare these survey score to their baseline and post-concussion Impact test scores. Our findings will potentially identify a positive correlation between concussions and the emotional symptoms in college soccer players. The research’s aim is to help add to concussion research to help prevent the risk of future negative consequences due to concussions for this population. This study is currently ongoing, preliminary results and conclusions will be discussed as obtained.
