Psychiatric Disturbances and Brain Damage

Traumatic brain damage is frequently accompanied by psychiatric disturbances, which can include striking to relatively minor alterations in personality, behavior, and emotional regulation. The persistence of these neurobehavioral syndromes often leads to deleterious effects on recovery and rehabilitation outcomes.

A recent surge of studies has emerged in the past several years to quantify the extent of psychiatric disorders associated with Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) and to describe differential clinical presentations. Various pre- and post-injury factors also have been hypothesized to contribute to the development and maintenance of psychiatric symptoms in survivors of brain injuries.

An article published in Curr Psychiatry Rep. 2006 Feb;8(1):73-80 summarizes the most recent research in these areas and highlights the gaps that need to be filled in subsequent future.