The Relationship Between Cognitive Functioning and Symptoms of Depression, Anxiety, and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in Adults with a Traumatic Brain Injury: a Meta-Analysis

AbstractA thorough understanding of the relationship between cognitive test performance and symptoms of depression, anxiety, or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in people with traumatic brain injury (TBI) is important given the high prevalence of these emotional symptoms following injury. It is also important to understand whether these relationships are affected by TBI severity, and the validity of test performance and symptom report. This meta-analysis was conducted to investigate whether these symptoms are associated with cognitive test performance alterations in adults with a TBI. This meta-analysis was prospectively registered on the PROSPERO International Prospective Register of Systematic Reviews website (registration number: CRD42018089194). The electronic databases Medline, PsycINFO, and CINAHL were searched for journal articles published up until May 2020. In total, 61 studies were included, which enabled calculation of pooled effect sizes for the cognitive domains of immediate memory (verbal and visual), recent memory (verbal and visual), attention, executive function, processing speed, and language. Depression had a small, negative relationship with most cognitive domains. These relationships remained, for the most part, when samples with mild TBI (mTBI)-only were analysed separately, but not for samples with more severe TBI (sTBI)-only. A similar pattern of results was found in the anxiety analysis. PTSD had a small, negative relationship with verbal memory,...
Source: Neuropsychology Review - Category: Neuroscience Source Type: research