Play Safe Initiative is pleased to collaborate with the Concussion Research Centre on an exciting study aimed at learning more about concussion in young athletes. The study is presently recruiting athletes and we hope you can share this information with your networks in the Greater Toronto Area.

More about the study:
A concussion, also known as mild Traumatic Brain Injury (mTBI for short), is a common form of head and brain injury, and can be caused by a direct or indirect hit to the head or body (for example, a car crash, fall or sport injury). This hit to the head causes a change in brain function, which results in a variety of symptoms. To learn more about concussions, visit Think First Canada at www.thinkfirst.ca or the BrainFit Lab at www.brainfitlab.com .

To help youth athletes with concussion, we are looking to determine how the youth brain and body recover after a concussion and if there are improved ways that we can measure if young people are ready to return to activity (sport, school etc.)  Through this research, we hope to change the way we manage concussion in youth athletes and to improve the lives of children across the world.

We want to learn more about recovery from sports-related concussion in children and youth.  Specifically, we want to know how youth athletes feel after a concussion.  Things like headaches, feeling sick to their stomach or feeling more tired than normal.  We want to know if these feelings affect performance on brain and body fitness tests.  This information can help create return-to-activity (school, sport etc.) guidelines specific to youth athletes.

We also want to learn more about a new approach using heart rate as a way of knowing if the brain is ready to take on more activity after a concussion. We will compare this new approach to other approaches more commonly used in the past (balance, thinking, strength, brain scanning/imaging).  We hope that this new approach will let us know if young athletes like you are ready to return to activity after a concussion.

If you are interested in participating, please contact:
Michelle Keightley (mkeightley@hollandbloorview.ca) or
Nick Reed (nreed@hollandbloorview.ca).

We are happy to share news of the launch earlier today of two brain injury guides .  PSI, along with a number of other organizations had the opportunity to review and endorse these documents. 

The "Brain Injury Guide for Youth" aims to help young people understand the effects of brain injury.  "Understanding Brain Injury in Adolescence" is targeted at parents, coaches, educators and those that work with youth.  

These documents are not sport specific and as such can be shared in a variety of settings including sport, recreation, education and healthcare.  
You can find the link to both below:

http://teenmentalhealth.org/resources/entries/understanding-brain-injury-in-adolescence

http://teenmentalhealth.org/resources/entries/brain-injury-guide-for-youth

These resources are absolutely free to download from www.teenmentalhealth.org - a collaboration between IWK Health Centre, Dalhousie University and Sun Life Financial.   We encourage everyone to share these links on websites and with networks where at all possible.