Objective: To examine the relation between impaired awareness of deficits (IAD) and treatment adherence and to verify previous findings regarding the types of disabilities that people with traumatic brain injury (TBI) tend to underestimate.
Design: Cross-sectional study.
Participants: Twenty-four persons with moderate to severe TBI and 16 persons with traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI) admitted to an inpatient neurorehabilitation program.
Main outcome measures: IAD assessed using the short version of the Problem Checklist of the Head Injury Family Interview and treatment adherence using the Medical Regimen Adherence Scale.
Results: Presence of IAD is linked with poor adherence. Patients with TBI significantly underestimate their emotional/behavioural and cognitive disabilities, but accurately assess their physical disabilities, whereas patients with SCI accurately assess all spheres. Patients with TBI are significantly less aware of their disabilities compared with the patients with SCI as expected.
Conclusions: These results confirm IAD's link to treatment adherence, and support the observation that IAD is a common clinical feature of brain injury that should be carefully considered when making prognoses and developing and applying interventions with this population.