Self-reported traumatic brain injury during key developmental stages: examining its effect on co-occurring psychological symptoms in an adjudicated sample

ABSTRACT

Primary Objective: Prior research has demonstrated that traumatic brain injury (TBI) is associated with individual psychological symptoms. These findings, however, may not pertain to the influence of TBI during key developmental stages on the co-occurrence of negative psychological symptoms.

Research Design: It was hypothesized that (H1) self-reported TBI is associated with adverse psychological effects, that (H2) self-reported TBI during adolescences is associated with both immediate and delayed adverse psychological effects, and finally, (H3) self-reported TBI during the early stages of adulthood is not associated with immediate psychological effects.

Methods and Procedures: The current study employed a sample of adjudicated youth (N: 419 to 562) and structural equation modeling to estimate the association between self-reported TBI and subsequent adverse psychological effects.

Results: Findings suggested that higher levels of self-reported TBI during adolescence were associated with higher levels of adverse psychological effects. These effects were both immediate and delayed. However, higher levels of self-reported TBI during adulthood were not associated with immediate adverse psychological effects.

Conclusion: Overall, the findings suggest that deleterious outcomes related to self-reported TBI during key developmental stages include proximal and long-term adverse psychological effects.

KEYWORDS:

• Key developmental stages
• traumatic brain injury
• co-occurring psychological symptoms
• adverse psychological effects

APA compliance

Ian A. Silver, Joseph L. Nedelec, and Karli Province complied with all APA ethical standards and the manuscript is not under consideration for publication at any other journal.

Author contributions

Ian A. Silver and Joseph L. Nedelec developed the study concept. Ian A. Silver conducted the data analysis. Ian A. Silver, Joseph L. Nedelec, and Karli Province drafted the manuscript. All authors approved the final version of the manuscript for submission.

Data location

Mulvey, Edward P. Research on Pathways to Desistance [Maricopa County, AZ and Philadelphia County, PA]: Subject Measures, 2000-2010. ICPSR29961-v2. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2013-01-07. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR29961.v2

Authors’ note

The project described was supported by funds from the following: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (2007-MU-FX-0002), National Institute of Justice (2008-IJ-CX-0023), John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, William T. Grant Foundation, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, William Penn Foundation, Center for Disease Control, National Institute on Drug Abuse (R01DA019697), Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency, and the Arizona Governor’s Justice Commission. The content of the article is the sole responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of these agencies. We are grateful for their support, and any errors or omissions are ours alone. The current study did not receive any support from these grants.

Data availability statement

The data described in this article are openly available in the Open Science Framework at doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR29961.v2doi

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Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Notes

1. The substantive decline in n size for the sample was of concern. As such, a missing data analysis was conducted (after variance recode) and suggested that the analytical samples emulated that of the cases removed from listwise deletion. As illustrated in Appendix A, the results of the missing data analysis for each analytical sample generally suggested relatively small (t value less 5) mean differences between the analytical sample and the full sample. To ensure that the statistically significant mean differences were not substantively different (i.e., resulting in a meaningful change) between the two groups the standardized mean difference (Cohen’s d) was calculated. Generally, the Cohen’s d value for the statistically significant mean differences was less than .25 indicating minor mean differences between the full sample and analytical samples. Furthermore, missing data analyses were estimated. The missing data analyses suggested that the data was missing at random.

2. The p-values for the association between self-reported TBI at Wave 3 and adverse psychological effects at Wave 7 and Wave 8 corresponds to the unstandardized slope, which differ from the standardized p-value (Wave 7: p = .031; Wave 8: p = .029).

3. The large coefficient and standard error associated with the adverse psychological effects at Wave 7 resulted from the existence of a .00 disturbance term for the adverse psychological effects two-level latent construct suggesting a lack of residual (unexplained) variation within adverse psychological effects (Wave 7); thus, any error associated with omitted causes is thereby captured by the standard error. Consequently, the results of this model should be interpreted with caution (Kline, 2016).

4. Following the same logic as the previous footnote, these results should be interpreted with caution (Kline, 2016). The p-value for the association between TBI at Wave 6 and adverse psychological effects at Wave 7 corresponds to the unstandardized slope, which differ from the standardized p-value (Wave 7: p = .002).