Perceived Social Support and Its Impact on Mental Fatigue in Patients with Mild Traumatic Brain Injury

Abstract

Results: There were 65.1%, 37.1%, 34.8% and 32.5% individuals being identified as those with mental fatigue at 1 week, 3, 6 and 12 months, respectively. The scores of MFS didn't change substantially since 3 months post-injury. Compared to non-fatigued MTBI patients, those with long-lasting post- MTBI fatigue reported ex- tremely lower level of perceived social support. More- over, improved social support at 1 week was negatively associated with the occurrence of long-lasting fatigue. Conclusion: Sufficient social support could signifi- cantly decrease the occurrence of long-lasting men- tal fatigue among MTBI cases. It seemed of great importance to modify the emphasis of rehabilitation to include assessment and improvement of perceived social support at earlier stages after injury.