Chronic psychiatric disorders due to traumatic brain injury (TBI) potentially compromising the process of rehabilitation

Increasing numbers of persons with traumatic brain injury (TBI) are being observed in highly motorized countries becau-se of the fact that (road) accidents constitute the most frequent cause of such events. For example, car accidents are the main cause of death in persons up to 44 years of age. Thanks to the progress in medical care, the chances of survival after traumatic brain injury have in-creased, which, however, is associated with an increasing number of patients with chronic neuro-psychiatric disturbances requiring tre-atment and rehabilitation. The majority of these patients suffer from post-traumatic emotional disturbances or personality changes. Among the emotional disturbances, depressive and anxiety syndromes as well as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are most fre-quent. A smaller number of patients demonstrate cognitive function disturbances. The incidence of chronic psychotic syndromes re-sulting from traumatic brain injury is much lower. It was demonstrated that TBI significantly increases the risk of occurrence of other mental disturbances, not directly related to TBI. Alcohol abuse and dependence is most frequent among these disturbances. This cre-ates a difficult challenge for psychiatric health care. Chronic post-TBI psychiatric disorders can significantly compromise the process of rehabilitation. Therefore, it is important to establish the diagnosis of neuro-psychiatric manifestations resulting from TBI in order to implement appropriate psychological and psycho-pharmacological therapy facilitating rehabilitation and reducing post-traumatic deficits in TBI patients. In this review, the most frequent psychiatric disturbances occurring in post-TBI patients, potentially compromi-sing the process of comprehensive rehabilitation, are described.