The effects can be worse for girls than for boys

A lot of us link concussions mainly with football, but a study of high school athletes shows this injury isn’t just a guy thing.

True, football has the highest rate of concussions: 47 per 1,000 player-games or playerpractices (the number of athletes per team times the number of games or practices), according to the Journal of Athletic Training. But the sport with the second highest rate is girls’ soccer (36 per 1,000). Girls’ basketball (21 per 1,000) falls just behind boys’ soccer (22).

“People think that women are not as aggressive and it’s just the guys in football that get concussions. It’s really the girls, too,” says Amanda Weiss Kelly, MD, Pediatric Sports Medicine, UH Rainbow Babies & Children’s Hospital.

In a concussion, the brain is compressed or shaken inside the skull. Because you can’t see this injury, concussions often go unrecognized. They’re even more harmful to young women than to young men.

After a concussion, female athletes are nearly twice as likely as males to have problems with thought or memory. They’re also more prone to depression and more likely to have symptoms both one month and one year later.

To avoid problems, make sure daughters and sons wear the right safety gear and practice good sportsmanship. It may help to give young athletes cognitive tests before they compete. The results set a baseline that athletic trainers or doctors can measure against. That makes a concussion easier to diagnose.

“The biggest misconception is that you need to lose consciousness to have suffered a concussion,”

Dr. Weiss Kelly says. “You don’t even have to be hit in the head. A body blow that snaps the head can cause a concussion.”

Above all, a concussed person needs rest. Suffering a concussion makes a person far more prone to another one.

“Concussions need to be taken seriously,” Dr. Weiss Kelly says. “There can be lifelong effects, particularly with multiple concussions.”