Application of the Postconcussive Syndrome Questionnaire with medical and psychiatric outpatients

The Postconcussive Syndrome Questionnaire (PCSQ; Lees-Haley, 1992) was previously found (Axelrod, Fox, Lees-Haley, Earnest, Dolezal-Wood, & Goldman, 1996) to produce four factors, named Psychological, Somatic, Cognitive, and Infrequency. These four factors of the questionnaire were evaluated across five groups of medical and psychiatric outpatients. The patients were from neurology, mental health, family practice, and internal medicine clinics as well as from a clinic that evaluated new patients to a health maintenance organization. Mental health patients had greater psychological symptoms and fewer health concerns than the other groups. Neurology patients differed from the other groups by having greater Infrequency symptoms. Patients who were referred for their screening evaluation or were seen by internal medicine had fewer overall symptoms than the other three patient groups. The data from this study provide support for the use of the PCSQ as a multifactorial self-report measure of symptom presentation.