Evidence-Based Evaluation Process for Traumatic Brain Injuries and Co-morbid Psychological Disorders in Service Members

Mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI) is strongly associated with emotional and physical health problems, of which PTSD and depression are important mediators. There is a significant overlap between of military members who have experienced and/or witnessed a life threatening event and sustained a blast or other TBI. There is a need to develop a user-friendly, empirically-based, neuropsychological screening tool to be used by first responders to screen for mTBI. In Phase I, JXT will assess the co-occurrence of these neurocognitive and emotional events, determine the problems and associated conditions, examine the long term implications and evaluate diagnostic instruments in order to distinguish who is most at risk for becoming impaired. From this information, JXT will identify a pool of neuropsychological and emotional health test items to be used to construct a Statistical and Evidence-Grounded mTBI Evaluation and Neuro-assessment (SEGMEN) Tool; identify and document important control and mediator variables; specify the criterion/outcome variables; and prepare to evaluate the reliability and validity of the SEGMAN Tool in Phase II. This effort will be driven by the innovative JXT Test Construction and Validation Process Model. We will also create an automated conceptual demonstration of the SEGMEN Tool to assess usability and commercial potential.