Partner-inflicted brain injury may cognitively age survivors by over a decade.

Introduction: More than a third of women in the United States are estimated to experience abuse by an intimate partner, and blows to the head and strangulation are common in such instances. Yet the cognitive consequences of partner-inflicted brain injuries remain poorly characterized relative to brain injuries from other mechanisms, such as athletics and military service, and study sample sizes have tended to be small. The degree to which these injuries accumulate into measurable cognitive harm, whether the harm of such injuries can be quantified in a meaningful way, and how that harm compares with better-recognized causes of repetitive head injury, has not been established. Rationale: We administered ten cognitive tests, scored across sixteen domains, to 207 women with lifetime exposure to physical intimate partner violence, of whom 67% ( Results: Women who had sustained any partner-inflicted brain injury performed below the general population mean on 11 of the 16 cognitive abilities measured, from reasoning ( Conclusion: Women experiencing partner-inflicted brain injuries demonstrated cognitive aging of over 20 years, and yet, the true cognitive harms of such injury are likely more severe than those reported here. These results are particularly grave because partner-inflicted injuries may compromise the very cognitive capacities women must rely on to leave abusive relationships, care for their children, sustain employment, navigate legal proceedings, and remain safe post-violence. Taken together, these findings underscore partner-inflicted brain injury as a major, under-recognized source of cognitive harm, potentially affecting more women than brain injury in professional football or the military while lacking comparable clinical recognition and care.