Posttraumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury: Are they mutually exclusive?

It has been suggested that posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and traumat ic brain injury (TBI) must be mutually incompatible disorders. However grow ing empirical evidence has begun to question this. Evidence suggests that a lthough PTSD may be relatively rare among the TBI population, some TBI pati ents seem to develop PTSD. We suggest two theoretical routes through which PTSD might develop in TBI patients: through nonconscious processes in indiv iduals who are subsequently amnesic, but who were conscious at the time of the traumatic episode and through subsequent appraisal processes in individ uals who were unconscious during the traumatic episode.