Emotional and personality changes following brain tumour resection

Abstract

Psychological distress has a high prevalence in brain tumour patients, and understanding the emotional and personality changes that may follow neurosurgery is important for clinical management of these patients. We aimed to characterise these emotional and personality changes using subjective, observer-rated and clinical measures. We examined subjective changes in emotional experience and observer-rated changes to personality disturbances following neurosurgery for brain tumours (n = 44), compared to a control group that had undergone spinal surgery (n = 26). Participants completed the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale and a Subjective Emotional Change Questionnaire. Observers who knew t..