Clinical studies suggest that antisocial behaviour, having fewer friends, aggressive tendencies, and an inability to tolerate frustration are common post-TBI consequences during childhood and adolescence, and that symptoms that often persist into adulthood could lead to vocational failure. For example, in a small cross-sectional investigation that compared 7-17 olds with moderate to severe TBI with age-matched youth who acquired orthopaedic injuries, found correlates of poor social cognition (below age expected social relations with peers, deficient social cognitive skills) at three months after the injury. Parents whose children (9 to 15 years old) had a TBI also reported that their children had greater peer relationship difficulties and also emotional distress, relative to parents whose children never acquired a TBI.
We report here an investigation of the adverse mental health and behavioural correlates of lifetime TBI in a large representative sample of adolescents in grades 7-12 in the province of Ontario, Canada. This investigation provides the first population-level data on this association in a large adolescent sample of TBI with important measures including suicidality and other mental health measures, bullying, and conduct behaviors.