Poster Session 03 Program Schedule
02/15/2024
09:30 am - 10:40 am
Room: Shubert Complex (Posters 1-60)
Poster Session 03: Neurotrauma | Neurovascular
Final Abstract #5
Poster Symposium: Invisible Injuries: Screening, Assessment, and Rehabilitation of Traumatic Brain Injury in Vulnerable Populations — Abstract 4
Violence-related Traumatic Brain Injury in Justice-involved Individuals
Spenser Nye, University of Denver, Denver, United States
Kim Gorgens, University of Denver, Denver, United States
Category: Acquired Brain Injury (TBI/Cerebrovascular Injury & Disease - Adult)
Keyword 1: traumatic brain injury
Objective:
Traumatic brain injury (TBI) affects 8% of the population and up to 97% of justice-involved adults in Colorado where it increases the risk for re-offense and poor psychosocial and community outcomes. The objective of this research was to determine the overall prevalence rate of self-reported TBI history in the Colorado criminal justice system and identify gender differences in the vulnerability to TBI, biopsychosocial comorbidities of violence-related TBI, and differences in TBI-related rehabilitation needs.
Participants and Methods:
A program development partnership between the University of Denver, the Colorado Department of Human Services Brain Injury Program, and 11 county jail and probation systems along the front range of Colorado identified 1,958 inmates and probationers with a significant TBI history. Of those, 974 agreed to participate in a voluntary neuropsychological screening battery and consented to participate in this research.
Results:
The overall rate of TBI history ranged from 27% to 97% with an overall mean across settings of 54%. Findings revealed the convergence of psychosocial vulnerabilities like substance abuse (96%), mental illness (76%), exposure to childhood violence (61%) and violent victimization as an adult (61%), and suicide attempts (40%) among persons with TBI in the criminal justice system. Violence was the most commonly referenced mechanism of TBI, with a prevalence rate over two times higher than the general population (32% vs. 15%, respectively). While this poses concern for the systems that provide care to persons in the criminal justice system, results showed even greater risk for justice-involved women, who were six times more likely to sustain violence-related multiple TBIs then their male counterparts. In addition, the women in our sample were found to have greater rates of biopsychosocial vulnerabilities, including physical health complaints, mental illness and medication-management for mental illness, trauma histories, including both exposure to childhood violence and violent victimization as an adult, and suicide attempts.
Conclusions:
This research reflects a very high average prevalence of reported TBI history among adults in criminal justice settings (54%) and a startlingly high prevalence rate of 97% of women in one setting. The overrepresentation of biopsychosocial vulnerabilities and behavioral health comorbidities outlined here may account for the high community re-entry and treatment failure rates reported in the literature. Certainly, these results paint an alarming picture of the accumulated vulnerability for women in these settings. Documenting these specific gender differences in vulnerability among women with TBI in the criminal justice system is essential to not only more accurately forecast the risk for poor outcomes but also to justify the need for community-centered, brain-injury-informed, gender-responsive programming.
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