It is devastatingly impactful, because survivors oftentimes don't even recognize they are suffering from a traumatic brain injury, so they blame themselves, number one. They can't connect why they used to function in a usual manner and, all of a sudden, they are not.
One of the most significant risks is that strangulation and traumatic brain injury are cumulative. We found that the women are not strangled once, but multiple times. We know that the more you are strangled, the more harmful the resulting impact.
Women are living in a sort of a daze, not recognizing the dangers they face at the hands of their partners—oftentimes these injuries are literally inflicted by the hands—these men who are abusing them, who literally have the women's lives in their hands when they're being strangled.
The women are unaware of the consequences, so not having an opportunity to train and to raise awareness, not having funding to continue to do the research and again, to raise awareness, is one of the reasons we believe so strongly that there needs to be a lot more light shone on the impacts of traumatic brain injury from strangulation, not just to educate women survivors themselves, but to educate frontline service providers, judges, lawyers, politicians and everybody about the short, mid and long-term impacts of this form of violence.