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- 01 30, 2025
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A KNOCK ON the head can change the course of a whole life. affect around one in ten people in rich countries. Those who have experienced such injuries are more likely to suffer mental-health problems and loneliness. They are more likely to struggle with addiction to drink or drugs, or to be homeless. They are also more likely to commit crimes, including violent ones, although most do not. Estimates vary, but they consistently show that people in prison are many times more likely to have brain injuries.Those whose brains are not “neurotypical” in other ways also make up an extraordinarily large share of the prison population. People with learning difficulties, intellectual disabilities and autism are all over-represented behind bars. In Canada young people with fetal alcohol spectrum disorder, which is the result of exposure to alcohol in the womb and which damages the brain’s frontal lobe, are incarcerated at 19 times the rate of the wider population.