A new study out of UBC shows that one out of every two homeless people has suffered a traumatic brain injury (TBI).

The study was published this week in The Lancet public health medical journal. Jacob Stubbs is a PhD student in the psychiatry department.

Speaking on The Jeff Andreas Show, he says a traumatic brain injury is broadly associated with poorer health and functioning and as for the implications, he says the first step in addressing any problem is recognizing there is one.

“But, I think there’s implications for two groups. One is healthcare workers, where we hope they will be able to have an increased awareness for the burden of TBI in this population. Identifying TBI or problems that stem for brain injuries may help facilitate more targeted care and hopefully better outcomes. Second, there’s a real need for better research on this topic to better understand how the health of these individuals is affected by TBI, but also what can be done in response.”

Stubbs says there was a common theme around how these injuries were occurring.

“For context, in the general population the most common, what we call mechanism of injury, is sports falls, car accidents, that kind of thing. What we show in this study is across all studies that have looked at mechanism of injury in the homeless or marginalized population, by far the most common mechanism of injury is assault.”

Stubbs hopes this study increases awareness about traumatic brain injuries among the homeless which will hopefully lead to better care.

Listen to the full segment below: