This is a part of the podcast series from the Model Systems Knowledge Translation Center on Irritability, Anger, and Aggression after TBI. Dr. Flora Hammond discusses the 5 dimensions of irritability.

Through our research, we've identified five different dimensions of irritability that's effective, behavioral, cognitive, perceptual, relational, and environmental. Starting with the first one, effective that entails mood and emotion. Things like anxiety, depression, and how someone's feeling today about how they are and the things around them. Behavioral, that includes things like trying to control impulses and self-regulation, things like that. Trying to control the time that you have to manage today and having control of your life or having disruptions to that. Cognitive perceptual includes what we call self-talk. We talk to ourselves every day. We're hearing our own voice, and sometimes those are negative thoughts and people with brain injury, what we learned have a lot of negative self-talk, comparing to where they were before, getting upset with themselves for not being able to do what they used to do. Thinking that people think they're stupid. So the self-talk and how they may be perceiving the world around them can be contributing to irritability. Relational has to do with people interacting with each other and that causing irritability, for example, being interrupted in the middle of a task or being reminded of things to do can feel like nagging, misinterpreting someone else's communication or their emotions or maybe being misinterpreted. Environmental, a lot of people will complain of sensitivity to noise and crowds and that irritating them or changes in their environment that may disrupt how they feel like they need to do things to be in control.

Visit https://msktc.org/tbi and get the answers you need from experts who conduct innovative and high-quality research, provide patient care, and work to improve the health and overall quality of life for people with traumatic brain injury. That’s https://msktc.org/tbi.