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In Vivo Protocol of Controlled Subconcussive Head Impacts for the Validation of Field Study Data
Published on: April 18, 2019
Characterizing Intimate Partner Violence-Related Head Trauma in Community-Recruited Women
Carrie Esopenko1, Divya Jain, Amelia J Hicks
1Author Affiliations: Department of Rehabilitation and Human Performance, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York City, New York (Dr Esopenko, Dr Jain, Dr Hicks, Ms Carlsson, and Ms Dorman); Department of Psychology, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania (Ms Carter, Mr Cwiek, Ms Méndez-Fernández, Ms Rebuck, Dr Hillary, and Dr Marshall); Traumatic Brain Injury and Concussion Center, Department of Neurology, University of Utah School of Medicine, Salt Lake City, Utah (Ms Read, Ms Velez, Dr Tate, and Dr Wilde); George E. Wahlen Department of Veteran Affairs Salt Lake City Healthcare System, Salt Lake City, Utah (Ms Read, Dr Tate, and Dr Wilde); cBRAIN, Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatics, and Psychotherapy, University Hospital, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, Bavaria, Germany (Drs Rojczyk and Koerte); Psychiatry Neuroimaging Laboratory, Department of Psychiatry, Mass General Brigham, Harvard Medical School, Somerville, Massachusetts (Drs Rojczyk, Koerte, and Lin); German Center for Child and Adolescent Health (DZKJ), partner site Munich, Munich, Germany (Dr Koerte); Department of Radiology, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts (Dr Lin); Center for Clinical Spectroscopy, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts (Dr Lin); Social Life and Engineering Sciences Imaging Center, Penn State University, University Park, Pennsylvania (Dr Hillary); and Department of Psychology, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia (Dr Marshall).
Objective:
The aim of the study was to characterize the experiences of intimate partner violence (IPV)-related head trauma (HT) among cisgender women.
Setting:
Three geographic regions across the United States.
Participants:
Seventy-two cisgender women aged 18 to 60 years (mean age = 39.6 years).
Design:
In-depth semi-structured interviews.
Main Measures:
Participants completed a semi-structured interview, which was audio-recorded to determine the number and mechanisms of IPV-HT injuries experienced over their lifetime. Quotes from interview transcriptions were used to illustrate how participants describe their IPV-HT episodes.
Results:
A total of 69/72 cisgender women reported at least 1 injury episode that involved IPV-HT. Participants reported between 1 and 9 injury episodes that involved HT during their lifetimes. Participants reported a total of 240 injury episodes, of which 186 represented a single, isolated injury, while 54 were a repetitive exposure by the same mechanism(s) of injury over time. The time over which an injury episode was repeated ranged from 1 month to 16 years (mean: 4.72 years, standard deviation: 4.70 years). The most frequent mechanisms of injury were blunt force trauma (41.7%) and strangulation (22.1%), while 22.5% of episodes involved multiple mechanisms. The most common within-person overlap of mechanisms was blunt force trauma and strangulation ( n = 21, 31%). The interview quotes demonstrated that the true frequency of IPV-HT may be unknown and/or unable to be recalled, highlighting the challenges in capturing accurate IPV-HT exposure within this population even through in-depth interviews.
Conclusions:
This study provides important information on the experience of HT among women with exposure to IPV. Such findings may improve our ability to characterize and understand the injuries resulting from IPV among women, which may, in turn, benefit existing tools for determining experiences of IPV-HT and probable brain injury.
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