Top Ten Reasons Why All Athletes Need to have Neuropsychological Testing

Abstract

Currently, we are more and more aware of head injuries, concussion and the risks and dangers of athletes being exposed to long term risk and injury.Twenty years or so ago, coaches relied on side line assessment to decide as to whether an athlete who“has had his/her bells rung” should return to play. Currently however, there is much more sophisticated sideline assessment (such as Impact) and other laptop instruments. There are many, many reasons why athletes should undergo pre-and post-test assessment as well as sideline assessment. These will be summarily discussed. These issues have also been discussed by:Arginteanu (2019) and others have clearly specified the need to be concerned and observant regardingthe concept of return to play and even return to the classroom. Hernandez, Giordano, Goubran, Parivash, Grant, Zeineh and Camarillo (2019) have discussed sports related concussions and Corman, Adame, Tsa, Ruston, Beaumont, Kamrath, Liu, Posteher, Tremblayand van Raalt, (2019) have published on sports related concussions. Rose, Yeates, Nguyen, McCarthy, Ercole, Pizzimenti, (2019)have written on youth tackle football. Engleman (2013) writing in The Rotarian pp 27-30 suggests that “youth football leagues should require coaches and encourage all parents, to take the “Heads IUP” training course available at www.cdc.gov. The web site of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention” There is much concern about CTE (Chronic traumatic encephalopathy- which is a progressive degenerative disease of the brain. This is usually discerned in individuals who have some type of history of repetitive brain trauma or injury. This could include soccer, basketball, baseball, softball (at least many players DO wear helmets) and wrestling (in terms of wrestling, players do wear protective devices for their ears, but still may suffer concussions and head injuries. Shaughnessy and Laman (2012) have provided an excellent review of evidence based intervention and treatment/rehabilitation of traumatic brain injury. This was published in the Research Journal in Organizational Psychology and Educational Studies and is a serious review of the literature in this realm.