Frontal acquired brain injury, substance abuse and their common psychological symptoms in the Iranian population.

PRIMARY OBJECTIVE To compare the scores from the Iranian version of the Frontal Systems Behavioral Scale (FSBS) with the norms collected for the American, English-speaking population and to examine the ability of the FSBS to discriminate between acquired brain injury and addiction. RESEARCH DESIGN Multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and post hoc Bonferroni tests. METHODS AND PROCEDURES 120 subjects (41 patients with frontal acquired brain injury [FABI], 47 abstinent Substance Abusers (SA), and 32 healthy controls from the Iranian population) were selected. An Iranian version of the FSBS was administered to all participants. MAIN OUTCOMES AND RESULTS Patients with FABI and SA had higher scores than the control group on the FSBS total score; patients with FABI scored significantly higher than SA, and SA significantly higher than controls. While SA had greater subscales of executive dysfunction than controls, patients with FABI had higher scores than SA and the control group in the subscales of disinhibition, apathy, and executive dysfunction. CONCLUSIONS Two clinical samples of Iranian participants had detective behavioral problems associated with frontal systems dysfunction based on Iranian version of the FSBS, which makes this scale a useful instrument for the detection of behavioral problems.