A - 150 Emotional Awareness in Individuals with Traumatic Brain Injury.

Abstract

To examine emotional awareness in individuals with traumatic brain injury (TBI) utilizing the Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale (LEAS). Thirty-nine individuals with moderate-severe TBI received the Levels of Emotional Awareness Scale (LEAS) consisting of 10 scenarios. Each scenario contains two components: a self-component, where participants are required to describe how they would feel, and another component, where they describe how the other person in the scenario would feel. Individuals also received Empathy Scale (ES) and Empathy Quotient (EQ) to evaluate empathy as well as measures of quality of life (Quality of Life After Brain Injury QOLIBRI), satisfaction with life (SWL), and mood (Beck Depression Inventory-II BDI-II; State Trait Anxiety Inventory- STAI). Individuals with TBI had a mean age of 46.08 (12.67), education of 14.28 (1.90) years and were on the average 113.25 (104.63) months since injury. Results indicate that the LEAS is associated with empathy on both the ES r(39) =0.34, p = 0.034 and EQ r(39) =0.37, p = 0.019. The LEAS was not associated with QOLIBRI r(39) =0.09, p = 0.572, SWL r(39) = -0.18, p = 0.286, BDI-II r(39) =0.12, p = 0.453 or STAI r(39) =0.05, p = 0.758. Our data suggests individuals with TBI emotional awareness is associated with empathy, specifically lower emotional awareness is associated with lower empathy. Emotional awareness is not associated with quality of life, satisfaction with life or mood. Understanding the relationship between these two constructs may aide in where to target interventions to improve social outcomes for individuals with TBI.