Traumatic Brain Injury as Psychosis Development Factor

Abstract

Introduction

The pathophysiology of psychosis is not fully discovered yet. However, during the last years many different risk factors are shown to prove to have a strong influence within the development of this pathology. Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is one of them.

Objectives

Show TBI as a psychosis development risk factor.

Methods

Case report. A clinical vignette is presented followed by the results obtained in a bibliographic review.

Results

A young 19-year old immigrant man, who lives with his parents in a social exclusion situation is brought to the hospital after having been observed making estrange religious rituals within a local river. During the anamnese he declares that God is “getting in touch with him” while he shows to be changed, with suspicion about being pursued. He also reveals to have suffered a mild-severe TBI with 8 years, having right ear audition problems since then. During the hospitalization some medical test were done, such as MRI, showing the lack of the inner right ear, as well as white matter abnormalities in his right hemisphere, which could be consequence of the TBI. Those findings make us think that this pathology might have been influenced, within other factors, by the traumatic brain injury.

Conclusions

This bibliographic review shows that traumatic brain injury may increase the risk of developing psychosis up to 65% from healthy controls, with a medium gap of 3.3 years between the TBI and the appearance of psychotic pathology.

Disclosure of interest

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.