The community competence scale as a measure of functional daily living skills

Independence in managing one's finances after traumatic brain injury

PRIMARY OBJECTIVE

To establish whether the budgeting task of the Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (IADL) Profile discriminates individuals with a traumatic brain injury (TBI) from healthy controls and to identify the nature of the observed difficulties.

METHOD

This study tested 27 adults with moderate or severe TBI and 27 controls matched for age, sex and education on the budgeting task of the IADL Profile. The budgeting task is a complex real-world problem involving the preparation of a yearly budget for an individual living on a fixed income with the goal of saving money to purchase a car.

MAIN RESULTS

The results showed that TBI subjects, the majority of whom had documented frontal lesions and/or diffuse axonal injury based on CT scan reports, were more likely than control subjects to experience difficulties on all task-related operations (planning, carrying out and verifying attainment of goal), with planning being particularly affected. These deficits were shown to impact on financial abilities, an issue of particular concern for TBI individuals reporting full responsibility of their finances.

CONCLUSIONS

The budgeting task of the IADL Profile discriminates TBI subjects from controls. Planning was shown to be the most significant difficulty underlying reduced independence in the task.