Data Trends 2024: Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI)

About 185,000 veterans within VHA have a TBI diagnosis. TBI is often accompanied by various comorbidities, which can cause symptoms that significantly contribute to disability among veterans, including headaches, irritability, sleep disorders, memory problems, slower thinking, and depression. These can affect veterans’ employment status, family relationships, social behaviors, and community reintegration.

Researchers investigated whether participation restrictions, an indicator of the need for OT, was associated with outpatient OT utilization in the VHA among 8684 post-9/11 veterans with mTBI. Participation restrictions were associated with OT utilization, yet many veterans with mTBI did not receive such care. Veterans with TBI had 1.69 times (95% CI, 1.64–1.73) increased risk of any stroke (ischemic or hemorrhagic) compared to veterans without TBI.