Impact of diagnostic terminology on parental attitudes toward concussion and brain injury

Although some have argued that the terms concussion and mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) should not be used interchangeably, any differences between the diagnoses are subtle. In this study, we recruited 98 individuals through Amazon Mechanical Turk who self-identified as having children between the ages of 13 and 18 (inclusive). Participants were asked questions about a hypothetical injury to their child, related to symptoms, participation in school and physical activity, and recovery prognosis. Roughly half (n = 51) were asked these questions in reference to a “concussion”, and the remainder (n = 47) were asked questions in reference to an “mTBI.” Overall no significant differences were observed in terms of symptoms and prognosis, however, participants asked about an mTBI were more likely to expect activity restrictions (in both school and sports) than individuals asked about a concussion, F(6, 89) = 3.1467. This suggests an interesting dissociation between perceptions of injury severity, and attitudes toward participation. In addition, after adjusting the p-values to control for multiple comparison bias, an injury classified as an mTBI was also considered more likely than an injury classified as a concussion to: take more than a week to recover [F(1,96) = 5.66, p = 0.040]; result in symptoms that persisted for several months [F(1, 96) = 5.69, p = 0.040]; and present with feelings of sadness or depression [F(1,96) = 5.27, p = 0.040]