Risks of youth sports minimal
articipation in youth sports involves risk. As parents, we all try to understand these risks, weigh them against the benefits, and decide whether it’s worth it to have our kids participate.
Today, one seemingly hears about concussion and its purported consequences at every turn. With the recent release of the movie “Concussion,” even Hollywood has weighed in.
The increased attention has been welcomed in many respects. Concussions are injuries to the brain and need to be taken seriously. Parents, athletes and athletic personnel now increasingly recognize this.
Yet the sheer volume of information can be overwhelming. It can be difficult to discern what is scientifically well-established, less well-established, or bunk.
The risks of concussion have become widely misunderstood. Concussions are no more frequent today than they were 20 years ago, even if we are better at identifying them. Although they are relatively common in youth sports, they are not inevitable. Football is one of the highest-risk sports, but only about 5 percent of high school athletes sustain concussions each season.
When athletes do sustain concussions, the vast majority recover completely, within days to a few weeks. Certainly, catastrophic outcomes can result from sports-related head trauma. Thankfully, extreme outcomes are rare, statistically about as common as death from lightning.
“Concussion” has contributed to the impression that a clear risk for NFL players is suicide from “chronic traumatic encephalopathy” (CTE). But multiple scientific organizations have examined whether concussions cause suicide, and none have found a causal link.
Whether playing in the NFL increases the risk of a unique brain disease like that described for CTE (or another neurodegenerative disease) remains unsettled. Important questions are being asked about what decades of exposure to head trauma might mean, but the research is still in its infancy.
What we can be confident about is that no reasonable scientific evidence exists to indicate that concussion in youth sports causes suicide or late-life neurologic, cognitive, or emotional problems.
Amid all of the discussion about concussion, the advantages of organized sports have been almost entirely neglected. This is unfortunate. Participation in youth sports is associated with innumerable benefits. These include healthier lifestyle habits and reduced obesity, as well as improved social relationships, school performance, self-esteem, and emotional adjustment.
So, should you let your child play contact sports like football, soccer, hockey, lacrosse, or wrestling? That involves lots of factors for each child, and is best made on an individual basis.
My wife and I will let our children play any of these sports. If they begin getting multiple concussions, we will re-evaluate the sensibility of participation with their pediatrician and medical specialists.
The scientifically established benefits of participation in organized sports outweigh the known concussion risks for my own kids. Playing youth sports today is apt to be less dangerous than ever given the broad increase in risk awareness and greater emphasis on player safety in rulemaking, coaching and officiating. Michael Kirkwood is a pediatric neuropsychologist at Children’s Hospital Colorado.