The use of significant others to enhance the detection of malingerers fromtraumatically brain-injured patients

Cognitive and neurobehavioral symptoms are common following traumatic brain injuries (TBIs). Because malingerers are likely to complain of such sympto ms and perform poorly on neuropsychological tests, clinicians may have cons iderable difficulty distinguishing malingerers from TBI patients. In this s tudy, we compared the subjective complaints of malingerers to TBI patients and then compared both groups to the problems observed by their respective significant others. We rested the assumption whether significant others cou ld add one more piece to the challenging puzzle of diagnosing malingering. Our results demonstrated that the malingerers complained of more problems t han patients who had sustained moderate or severe TBI. However, the signifi cant others of the malingerers observed fewer cognitive, emotional-behavior al, and total problems than did the significant others of patients with sev ere, moderate and even mild TBI. These findings suggest that the detection of malingering can be enhanced by interviews with significant others. (C) 2 000 National Academy of Neuropsychology. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.