Psychotherapeutic treatment of survivors of traumatic brain injury: Review of the literature and special considerations

Abstract

Primary objective: To provide an overview of useful clinical information for healthcare providers involved in traumatic brain injury (TBI) rehabilitation, including current methods used with survivors of TBI, therapeutic considerations in light of this population’s cognitive, emotional and social difficulties and issues regarding the therapeutic working alliance from both survivor and provider perspectives.

Research design: Non-systematic clinical review.

Method: The literature was intended to be comprehensive to reflect both past and present contributions to the field. To that end, citations were included from seminal and current texts as well as relevant original and review articles from 1985–2012 in PubMed and PubMedCentral online research databases.

Main outcomes and results: This article highlights the usefulness of psychotherapy for treatment of psychiatric symptoms in the TBI population, reviews available modalities and offers considerations and suggestions to facilitate and improve treatment.

Conclusions: Although challenging and perhaps frustrating at times, psychotherapy with this population can be validly attempted and ultimately very rewarding for both the survivor and therapist. Future research should seek to perform controlled studies to examine therapeutic efficacy and compare gains by injury severity in the hopes of creating best practice guidelines for practitioners.

• Counseling
• psychotherapy
• therapy