Northland Emergency doctor on govt urgent heathcare boost
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Photo: NICK VEASEY/ SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY / AFP Warning: This story discusses suicide. An expert in traumatic brain injuries is calling for consistent protocols when dealing with concussions in schoolyard sport to prevent debilitating long-term impacts. While there's greater awareness about the risks associated with concussion, Pat Hopkins from the Laura Fergusson Brain Injury Trust said that too often, head knocks are treated differently if they occur during lower-level sports. Checkpoint has spoken to young people who've been concussed playing competitive sport throughout school and university and continue to sufferer the consequences for years afterwards. They want others to know about the the mental and physical toll that concussion can have and the gruelling rehabilitation process that's required. Moses Bygate-Smith was in a freak accident while trialling for a national ice hockey team in 2018. He was told he had a severe concussion, his third in 18 months. In the months that followed his injury, he said the symptoms took over his life. "If there was even just a pamphlet, for example, with a couple of words, or even just a short sentence on it, I couldn't read that sentence without getting an excruciating headache. When I'd have conversations with people, I would be halfway through a sentence, and I would actually forget what I was saying." He said he experienced depression and anxiety during the months of his recovery. "There were thoughts of sort of suicide at that time just because I guess it was very hard to think that potentially this was going to be the state of my life, for the for the rest of my life." He was unable to read, listen to music or exercise as he grappled with giving up the sport he dedicated so much of his life to. "Being sort of a person that lived and breathed ice hockey as much as the concussion was hard. I think what was a driving factor of the difficulty was the identity crisis that sort of comes with the changes you have to make from a head injury, especially for people [who] are athletes or involved with sports." Bygate-Smith has come a long way since his injury and has gone on to complete a master's degree in sports science. But the impact of his injury lingers to this day. Georgia Hendry grew up racing horses competitively and suffered multiple concussions while riding. She'd find it hard to study and struggled with exhaustion. After a car crash in 2021, things became even worse. "I went to the doctors, and I was like something's not right. I can't even sit in a lecture and obtain information; I'm having to go home and rewatch the lectures and then pause the lectures so I could keep up with the person speaking." She said not being able to play sport impacted her mental health. She's come a long way since her injury and is now working full time as a preschool teacher. But she said the recovery process was long and gruelling. "It's not an easy recovery and it's a very long recovery. It's not like a broken bone, it's your brain." Hopkins said the Christchurch-based Laura Fergusson Brain Injury Trust is seeing three times more clients than a few years ago. "The recognition of concussion has improved a lot over recent years and the awareness, so I think people and things like the blue card system in rugby have helped. "It's not just 'oh you'll be right' anymore, it's still out there a little bit, but it's changed." But she said it's in lower grade sports, where more could be done to protect younger people from sustaining concussions. Currently, the cost of seeing a doctor deters many people from getting checked. Hopkins said she wants consistent protocols for schoolyard and lower-level sports. "The kids just want to play and so it sometimes takes a strong coach to say, 'well, no, you can't play, you may be feeling okay, but it hasn't been enough time since your injury." "If the protocols and rules were more established that might help that." Over the past four years, new concussion injury claims lodged to ACC have increased from just over 39,000 in 2022 to 47,000 in 2024. There's been over 24,000 concussion injuries claimed so far this year. A claim to ACC may include multiple injuries. ACC estimates 30 percent of concussions go unreported. The highest number of concussion claims are from falls, followed by sports-related injuries. If it is an emergency and you feel like you or someone else is at risk, call 111. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
