ABSTRACT
The body of information to be gathered from the interview can be termed part of the neuropsychiatric database. It has a long and hallowed presence within the practice of medicine regardless of the orientation of the practitioner. The gathering of an appropriate history has been the sine qua non of the practice of medicine since at least the time of Hippocrates.129 Benjamin Rush first provided the U.S. with important methods for medical inquiry of the mind in 1812.130 Gowers provided a manual for exploring diseases of the nervous system in the late 1880s.131 Thus, the art of a neuropsychiatric history is first based upon fundamental principles of history taking in a general medical examination; it has developed further as an amalgamation of a fundamental psychiatric and neurological historical examination of the patient. In neuropsychiatry, attention to cerebral organization must not be matched by neglect of psychosocial variables, for these may have a substantial impact on symptom expression, impairment, and disability.132 This attention to cerebral organization and psychosocial issues is required prominently within the evaluation of the traumatic brain injury. It is important for the skilled practitioner undertaking the evaluation of a patient who has sustained a traumatic brain injury to not allow the important aspect of history taking to lose its relevance vis-à-vis the remarkable advances that have been made in structural and functional brain imaging and cognitive neuropsychology.
