Impaired awareness and employment outcome after traumatic brain injury

Inaccurate self-awareness is a common finding after traumatic brain injury. Such impaired awareness has been hypothesized to limit patients' eventual functional outcomes by decreasing motivation for treatment and resulting in selection of inappropriate long-term goals. Previous investigations of the association between impaired awareness and employment outcome have produce d inconsistent results. The present article reviews these studies and prese nts the results of our new investigation of this issue. In addition, we stu died the comparability of two methods of measuring impaired awareness. Resu lts provided strong support for a positive relationship between accurate se lf-awareness and favorable employment outcome at followup.