Somatoform and cogniform disorders can co-occur following mild traumatic brain injury.  Treating individuals following traumatic brain injury requires careful assessment and formulation of complex, interacting factors related, for example, to the person's physical, mental, and social condition, as well as their health history before and after injury.  In many cases, somatic and cognitive symptoms are not fully explained by the injury itself, are out of proportion to the immediate effects of trauma, and difficult to account for by the patient's current physical condition.  Such symptoms may be characterized as somatoform, and diagnosed as a somatic symptom disorder.  Analogously, cognitive symptoms, for example of pronounced memory deficit, may be characterized as cogniform if results of neuropsychological assessment show levels of performance or patterns that cannot be explained by a neuropsychological formulation.  Although somatoform and cogniform disorders are not easily explained, they can cause disproportionate suffering among patients, loss of function at home and community, and frustration among health care professionals.  This poster reviews a model for understanding, assessing, and treating somatoform and cogniform symptoms in the context of a biopsychosocial approach to formulation.

Multidisciplinary neurobehavioural assessment and treatment of somatoform and cogniform disorder following mild traumatic brain injury:  Review and case study