Resilience and symptom reporting following mild traumatic brain injury in military service members

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between resilience and symptom reporting following mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI). It was hypothesized that, as resilience increases, self-reported symptoms would decrease.

Cross-sectional design.

Participants were 142 US military service members who sustained a mTBI, divided into three resilience groups based on participants' responses on the Response to Stressful Experiences Scale: Moderate (n = 42); High (n = 51); and Very High (n = 49). Participants completed the Neurobehavioral Symptom Inventory (NSI) and PTSD Checklist-Civilian Version (PCL-C) within 12 months following injury.

There were significant main effects for the NSI total score, cognitive cluster and affective cluster, as well as for the PCL-C total score, avoidance cluster and hyperarousal cluster. Pairwise comparisons revealed that there was a negative relationship between resilience and self-reported symptoms overall. Specifically, participants with higher resilience reported fewer post-concussion and PTSD-related symptoms than participants with lower levels of resilience.

These findings underscore the important role that resilience plays in symptom expression in military service members with mTBI and suggest that research on targeted interventions to increase resilience in the acute phase following injury is indicated.