Head Injuries Increase Aggression, Violent Behavior

Scientists were finally able to establish with certainty that experiencing violent traumas to the head makes survivors more likely to exhibit aggressive, violent behaviors. The conclusions were derived from an 8-year-long study conducted on the issue.

This correlation is especially true for teens, say investigators from the University of Michigan (U-M) School of Public Health, who conducted the new work. It was also found that the time at which the injury took place was an indicators of how violent the behaviors would be.

Teens participating in this study were first asked if they had suffered a head trauma. Those who said they did turned out to be a lot more aggressive than their peers at the end of the study, PsychCentral reports.

Interestingly, those who reported having suffered an injury to the head less than a year before the study was conducted were the most aggressive, suggesting a temporal link between the two. Until now, such researches were only conducted in prison populations.

This is the first time such a long-study is conducted in this matter in the general population, where researchers can watch the unrestricted effects of hear injuries unfolding. The team detailed its findings in the latest issue of the esteemed scientific journal Pediatrics.

“These are not necessarily sports-playing injuries. They could be from a car accident or from previous violent behavior, but it does support some of the sports research that’s been going on with concussions,” says Sarah Stoddard, PhD.

The team member, a research fellow at the U-M School of Nursing, is also the lead author of the new investigation. She says that the injuries her team analyzed were produced by anything from sports to wars and accidents.

“We found that the link between a head injury and later violence was stronger when a head injury was more recent, even after controlling for other factors including previous violent behavior,” she explains.

The study is very important, since more 1.7 million people sustain traumatic brain injuries every year. What the team noticed is that 25 percent of TBI victims admitted being more violent 8 years after they were injured.