'This isn’t my story': NHL legend Trevor Linden teams up with YWCA to advocate for women with brain injuries due to partner violence

Trevor Linden, the former captain of the Vancouver Canucks, has teamed up with YWCA Metro Vancouver to raise awareness about the number of women who suffer concussions as a result of intimate partner violence—an alarming 7,000 for every NHL player who gets one.

In a vulnerable video posted online this week, Trevor Linden, the former captain of the Vancouver Canucks, details the moments leading up to a concussion-inducing blow to the head.

“I remember being confused,” Linden says.

“My ears were ringing. It’s hard to talk about. I still experience pain, mood swings—the headaches are debilitating,” he continues, before confessing this isn’t his story.

Suddenly, a woman appears on screen and explains, “It’s mine.”

The hockey legend has teamed up with YWCA Metro Vancouver to raise awareness around concussions, which impact 7,000 women for every one NHL player, according to data by the B.C.-based project Supporting Survivors of Abuse and Brain Injury through Research (SOAR). 

CHANGING THE NARRATIVE

Linden joined CTV News Morning Live on Thursday to discuss how he got involved and why.

“Everyone hears about that hockey player that gets a concussion—that’s top of news—and that player also has the proper diagnosis, the proper care,” said Linden.

“So when we’re talking about women with these issues, they probably don’t have the same ability to get help and that was shocking to me,” he added.

Linden says he wants to help change the narrative surrounding women who experience intimate partner violence.

“It’s not nice to talk about, but it’s real and it happens,” he told CTV News. “The most impactful message I got was from parents with teenagers saying this (campaign) sparked a conversation about this issue and what that looks like and to talk about it,” said Linden

COMPARING ATHLETES WITH ABUSE VICTIMS

Dr. Paul van Donkelaar, who co-founded the SOAR project in 2016, says raising awareness is the main goal of this YWCA campaign.

“We came up with that kind of comparison with respect to NHL players just to make it clear how big the problem actually is,” said van Donkelaar, who admits it’s difficult to estimate the true number of concussions experienced by intimate partner violence victims compared to professional hockey players.

To gauge a rough estimate, the team behind the SOAR project recruited participants through the Kelowna Women's Shelter and analysed how those individuals performed on different brain assessments compared to young athletes who had recently suffered an acute sport-related concussion.

“We showed that it was in the same ballpark—they were showing some of the same deficits,” van Donkelaar said.

“So if athletes like Trevor Linden and other NHL players are going through this as a consequence of participating in a sport they love, drawing the analogy to that happening for women who are going through intimate partner violence I think is a really powerful message,” he added.

As a brain injury researcher of nearly 30 years, van Donkelaar has seen the conversation around concussions change in the sports world and he hopes a similar shift in thinking will emerge in Canadian society at-large.

“The project is really designed to better understand and characterize the intersection between brain injury and intimate partner violence, and get knowledge and evidence into the hands of those that provide support for people who are experiencing this. So, for example, frontline staff at women's shelters,” he explained.

In addition, van Donkelaar says brain injuries—regardless of how they’re sustained—can have negative impacts on health-care systems, raising the stakes of lowering stigma around concussions.

“There’s a fairly well established link between concussions and longer term neurodegenerative disorders, and that’s a burden to society and the healthcare system right?” Donkelaar asked. “ So if we as a society can do something to prevent some of those head injures, especially in the context of intimate partner violence by providing more supports for women who are experiencing this, the longer term effects could be reduced healthcare costs around things like dementia and Alzheimer’s disease,” he suggested.

WHY MEN ARE SPEAKING FOR WOMEN

Both van Donkelaar and Linden acknowledged the importance of men standing up for this cause.

“Advocating for women is so important,” Linden said. “It’s about reaching out to someone who may need help, because people don’t talk about this, it’s their secret—it’s something that’s hard to talk about.”

“Quite often, I'm the only man in the room, and it's intimidating but it's also important,” said van Donkelaar. “I think the more men recognize this and contribute to those conversations and take responsibility and call people out as needed, the more it'll change those conversations and lead to longer term improvements,” he concluded.

More information on how to help can be found on the website myconcussionstory.com