Sunday, August 14, 2011

Depression and Stroke

You have seen the ads on TV that say -- ‘Depression Hurts”.
It may hurt two ways in stroke:

  1. depression seems to be a risk factor for stroke (especially in women) and
  2. a recovery inhibitor after stroke. 
In a brand new research study (Pan et al., 2011) conducted by Harvard University, women who are depressed are more at risk for stroke.

Depression hurts recovery too.

People who are depressed after stroke do not recover as well as those who do not suffer from depression. In a 1992 Study Morris, Raphael and Robinson found that clinical depression occurring soon after stroke is associated with impaired recovery 14 months after stroke.

They concluded that depression has a negative effect on recovery in both functional status and cognitive performance and may produce deterioration in physical capacity in a number of patients.

Since 1992, many other studies have also confirmed that anxiety and depression are associated with reduced quality of life and less physical recovery.

A very recent Irish study (Donnellan, Hickey, Hevey, & O’Neill, 2010) concluded that poorer health related quality of life one year are associated with anxiety and depression following stroke, but only depression symptoms influenced functional recovery.

References:

Pan, A., Okereke, O.I., Sun, Q., Logroscino, G., Manson, J. et al., (2011). Depression and Incident Stroke in Women. Stroke. 42:00-00. E- published ahead of printing

Morris, P.L., Raphael, B., Robinson, R.G. (1992). Clinical depression is associated with impaired recovery from stroke. Medical Journal of Australia, 157(4):239-42.

Donnellan, C., Hickey, A., Hevey, D., O'Neill, D., (2010). Effect of mood symptoms on recovery one year after stroke. International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 25 (12), 1288-1295

More information on depression and risk of stroke

More information on Depression and Recovery

No comments:

Post a Comment