Neurobehavioural symptoms 1 year after traumatic brain injury: A preliminary study of the relationship between race/ethnicity and symptoms

Objective: To investigate whether White, African American and Hispanic individuals with a traumatic brain injury (TBI) express differences in neurobehavioural symptoms at 1 year post-injury after adjusting for demographic and injury characteristics. Design: Retrospective study. Participants: One thousand, three hundred and thirty-nine individuals from the TBI Model Systems National Database with primarily moderate-to-severe TBI (978 White, 288 African American and 73 Hispanic) hospitalized between 1996 and 2001. Main outcome measures: Neurobehavioural Functioning Inventory (NFI) at 1 year post-injury. Results: There were significant differences in NFI scores among the races/ethnicities for the depression, somatic, memory/attention, communication and motor subscales, after adjusting for demographic and injury characteristics; there were not significant differences in the aggression sub-scale. Hispanics had higher levels of symptom reporting than African Americans and Whites, while differences between African Americans and Whites were not significant. Conclusions: Hispanics scored significantly higher than Whites and African Americans on the sub-scales of the NFI, indicating more problems in these areas. Future research should focus on identifying factors that may contribute to the difference between the groups and treatment interventions should be implemented accordingly.