Former NHL star calls attention to 'staggering' rate of concussions for domestic violence survivors

Hockey legend Trevor Linden saw countless lives disrupted and careers cut short by concussions during his 19 seasons in the NHL.

Even still, the former captain of the Vancouver Canucks says he was "stunned" to learn survivors of domestic violence are concussed at rates much greater than professional athletes.

For every concussion incurred by an NHL player, approximately 7,000 women and girls in Canada are concussed because of intimate partner and domestic violence, according to a new estimate from YWCA Metro Vancouver and researchers at the University of British Columbia.

Linden is lending his name to a campaign raising awareness of concussions among survivors and advocating for increased support for diagnosis and treatment.

"The sad part about intimate partner violence is people don't like to talk about it and it's hard to talk about," said Linden. 

"Women are not diagnosed, they're not treated for it and that's something that hopefully we can change by bringing this issue to light."

Researchers at UBC's Supporting Survivors of Abuse and Brain Injury through Research group worked the YWCA to establish the new estimate of concussion rates among survivors based on data collected in Canada and the United States since 1997.

Approximately four in 10 women and girls in Canada will face violence from a current or former partner, according to a 2021 report by Statistics Canada, or about 290,000 every year. As many as 92 per cent of them will suffer a traumatic brain injury due to blows to their head or strangulation.

And that number has been on the rise in British Columbia since the COVID-19 pandemic, according to 2022 report from the B.C. Centre for Disease Control.

Transgender, disabled or racialized people also face higher