Network analysis of mild traumatic brain injury, persistent neurobehavioral and psychiatric symptoms, and functional disability among recent-era United States veterans.

Abstract

Recent-era U.S. veterans are clinically complex, with a high prevalence of co-occurring mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), psychiatric conditions, and behavioral dysfunction. The current study examined the direct and indirect associations between mTBI and persistent neurobehavioral, psychiatric, and functional disability symptoms among recent-era U.S. veterans and service members (n = 648). We evaluated the postconcussive syndrome (PCS) potential causal model with two network analysis modeling approaches. Separate analyses were conducted for military mTBI and lifetime mTBI. An exploratory factor analysis was conducted to limit topological overlap in the network analysis. The most influential symptoms (i.e., the unique variables most strongly associated with the rest of the network) in the military mTBI network were behavioral disengagement, expected influence (EI) = 1.10; cognitive difficulties, EI = 1.08; agitation/irritability, EI = 1.05; and PTSD-related reexperiencing and avoidance symptoms, EI = 0.98. After accounting for other symptoms, mTBI was only minimally informative, EI = 0.34. Additionally, military mTBI did not moderate the association between symptoms or the overall connectivity of the network. The results for lifetime mTBI were consistent with those for military mTBI. The present analyses identified a variety of behavioral, cognitive, and emotional symptoms that play an important role in understanding comorbidity and daily functioning among recent-era U.S. veterans. Associations between cumulative mTBI that occurred in civilian or military settings were indirect and relatively small in magnitude. The current results add to a growing literature raising doubts about the PCS model.