Summary
While concussions can be mild, delays or failure to treat them can have significant physical, mental, emotional, and social consequences. Some people never report or even recognize their concussion symptoms, resulting in what has come to be known as the “silent epidemic.” Because low socioeconomic status communities are affected by poorer access to healthcare information and services, youth in these communities may experience greater incidence of undiagnosed concussions and miss out on important opportunities to obtain the required care for optimal recovery. We need to better understand the incidence of concussions and its diagnosis more broadly in the general population. My research is correlational and seeks to investigate the relationship between socioeconomic status and the rate of concussion diagnosis among high school students (ages 14-18). This research uses a self-report, multiple-choice response survey distributed to students from public high schools in the Bay Area, located in communities with a range of socioeconomic status. It is hoped that the results of this research will advance the knowledge on the incidence and diagnosis of concussions in adolescents and any relationship with socioeconomic status.