Health-care providers traditionally considered PCS difficult to treat and resistant to available therapies. As recently as 1994, practitioners reported medication and psychotherapy to be of limited use. Nevertheless, the syndrome's prevalence has prompted a wide range of attempts at therapeutic solution. These include hypnosis, biofeedback, systematic desensitization, progressive muscle relaxation, cognitive retraining, and the use of anticonvulsant, antianxiety, antidepressant, and analgesic medications. A survey of the various techniques reveals that practitioners most often found a psycho-educational approach helpful.
Most people expect a consistent set of symptoms following a mild head injury.
A concussion activates these expectations and increases selective attention to the symptoms' presence, though some may have existed prior to the injury. These symptoms, along with the heightened attention to everyday cognitive imperfections, are then misattributed to the effects of brain damage. This misattribution, in turn, confirms the pre-existing expectations about the symptoms of head injury, leading to even greater autonomic and emotional arousal and resulting in even more symptoms. The intervention aims to forestall the cycle of misattribution, selective attention, and arousal that perpetuates the syndrome. Specifically, the intervention can help people see that their symptoms are not due to brain damage but, rather, are part of a normal response to the stress of mild head injury.