Media Sensationalism Driving Anxiety, Web Hits With Regards To CTE, Brain Studies And Football

A new brain study was released this week that showed football players who started before age 12 had increased chances of cognitive issues. Does the media report on this fairly? Or is it sensationalized to drive web hits?

There was a study released this week that purported to show that those who play football before the age of 12 showed “increased odds for clinically meaningful impairments in reported behavioral regulation, apathy and executive function, and … increased odds for clinically elevated depression scores, compared with those who began playing at 12 or older”. In other words, those who started before the age of 12 would show more emotional swings, apathy, have a higher chance of depression and have difficulty with memory, multitasking, planning, and attention. The study, entitled “Age of first exposure to American football and long-term neuropsychiatric and cognitive outcomes”, was published in “Translational Psychiatry” on September 19.

Brain studies are interesting to me not only because of the overall interest in CTE as it relates to football, but because it’s now been over two years since the event that caused my own brain injury and I am slowly coming to the realization that I will suffer these effects the from that injury for rest of my life. I am interested in following research not only in CTE, but in other neurodegenerative diseases and brain health overall. I am certainly not trying to tout myself as a brain expert but I do have some first-hand knowledge about dealing with brain injuries.

What I found interesting about this study was not necessarily the study itself but in how it was reported. Let’s take a look at some headlines from news outlets that they handled this news: