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A caregiver could be a spouse, a sibling, a parent, or someone else entirely. What makes a caregiver special is their innate ability to see PTSD symptoms as symptoms instead of writing the behaviors off as bad character. But, of course, the symptoms of PTSD can take a huge toll on the veteran and the caregiver. So when a caregiver reaches out for help, or to vent — do not say these things.

Prichard Colón was a boxer, a talented and promising one, but during a match in October 2015 he suffered a major brain injury that nearly killed him before leaving him in a coma for seven months. His road to recovery is slow and emotional.

Athletes who have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) may be at greater risk for experiencing persistent anxiety and depression after a concussion than people who do not have ADHD, according to a preliminary study.

While the V.A. covers the veterinary care and the equipment costs of service dogs for veterans with certain physical disabilities, like blindness or vision impairment, department leaders have long contended that there isn’t enough clinical evidence to prove their benefits for treating mental-health issues. “I would say there are a lot of heartwarming stories that service dogs help, but scientific basis for that claim is lacking,” Dr. Michael Fallon, the V.A.’s chief veterinarian, said during an interview with National Public Radio in 2017. “The V.A. is based on evidence-based medicine. We want people to use therapy that has proven value.” 

The V.A. is currently conducting research into the effectiveness of service dogs, but the process has been slow. Research started in 2011 was supposed to wrap up in 2015 but has repeatedly been stalled by problems with the study’s design and execution. In May, the V.A. said the findings of the study, which has cost $16 million to date, would be released to the public in 2020.

A study of high school and college football players suggests that biomarkers in the blood may have potential use in identifying which players are more likely to need a longer recovery time after concussion, according to a study published in the July 3, 2019, online issue of Neurology®, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

"One in 3 women in the United States has experienced intimate partner violence. What we found leads us to believe that many people are walking around with undiagnosed brain injury," said lead researcher Julianna Nemeth.

Caring for someone who's suffered a stroke can be challenging. “People don’t know what to do and they usually can’t guess,” caregiver Kelly Renzoni said. “Until you’re in this kind of situation, you have no clue what it’s like.” She offers her insights and advice on how to navigate the caregiver's role on the road to recovery.

Shutting down an inflammatory molecule could potentially provide treatment days after onset. “The immune, or inflammatory, response is turning out to be a real common denominator among many neurologic diseases,” says senior study co-author Katrin Andreasson, a professor of neurology at Stanford. “The question we asked was: What immunological pathways are involved after stroke? We think we found one.”

American soccer icon Brandi Chastain says she sometimes “can’t remember some details of a place we went . . . or somebody’s last name.” Both Chastain and fellow soccer player Michelle Akers have long wondered what effect the headers and other knocks to the head they took during games have had on their neurological health.

Rugby league legend Peter Sterling says he will donate his brain to science following the discovery of a disease linked to repeated concussions in American sport in two former Australian rugby league players. 

“Using annual estimates of severe physical violence,” Valera notes in a study published last fall in the Journal of Neurotrauma, “1.6 million women can be estimated to sustain repetitive T.B.I.s in comparison to the total annual numbers of T.B.I.s reported for the military and N.F.L. at 18,000 and 281 respectively.”

Part of the problem is that women hurt by intimate partners tend to hide that fact, making them hard to identify and study. But the bigger issue is that public outrage and advocacy play a major role in determining what research gets funded. In the case of head trauma, almost all the attention is going to football — and so, by extension, to only one gender.