Psychological treatment for anxiety in people with traumatic brain injury

Psychological interventions are commonly used in the management of anxiety and certain types of psychological treatments, such as cognitive behaviour therapy, are well suited to needs of individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI). An advantage of these interventions is that, given their highly structured content, they are amenable to specialised adaptation for memory, attention and problem solving impairments, reflecting the difficulties people with TBI often experience. This review identified three randomised controlled trials in the area of psychological treatments for anxiety after TBI. Some evidence was found for the effectiveness of the following interventions: cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) for treatment of acute stress disorder following mild TBI, and combining CBT and neurorehabilitation for treatment of general anxiety symptoms in people with mild to moderate TBI. The ability to make strong conclusions on the effectiveness of these approaches is limited by the small number of trials available for pooling of data, especially trials with similar conditions and participants.