Background and Purpose-The purpose of this study was to examine the performance of the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ)-9, a 9-item depression scale, as a screening and diagnostic instrument for assessing depression in stroke survivors. Methods-As part of a randomized treatment trial for poststroke depression (PSD), subjects with and without PSD completed the PHQ-9, a 9-item summed scale, with scores ranging from 0 (no depressive symptoms) to 27 (all symptoms occurring daily). Subjects endorsing 2 or more symptoms of depression were administered the criterion standard Structured Clinical Interview for Depression (SCID). Receiver operating characteristic analysis was used to examine the sensitivity and specificity of the PHQ-9 Results-Of 316 subjects enrolled, 145 met SCID criteria for major depression or other depressive disorder, and 171 were not depressed. PHQ-9 scores discriminated well between subjects with any versus no depressive disorder, with an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.96, as well as between subjects with and without major depression (AUCϭ0.96). The AUC was similar regardless of patient age, gender, or ethnicity. A PHQ-9 score Ն10 had 91% sensitivity and 89% specificity for major depression, and 78% sensitivity and 96% specificity for any depression diagnosis. Conclusions-The PHQ-9 performs well as a brief screener for PSD with operating characteristics similar or superior to other depression measures and similar to its characteristics in a primary care population. Moreover, PHQ-9 scores discriminate equally well between those with and without PSD regardless of age, gender, or ethnicity. Key Words: depression Ⅲ stroke P oststroke depression (PSD) affects approximately onethird of ischemic stroke survivors, is often undiagnosed and inadequately treated, and is associated with increased morbidity and mortality after stroke. 1-4 Depression screening after stroke is thus important but can be complicated by cognitive and physical symptoms of stroke that may introduce additional variability in assessment of depressive symptoms and depression diagnosis. Although several established depression screening instruments have been validated in stroke cohorts, 5-10 these scales can be burdensome for patients to complete, require a trained interviewer to administer, and often are designed only for screening and not as a diagnostic depression tool. The Patient Health Questionnaire 9-item depression scale (PHQ-9) is a 9-item self-administered depression screening and diagnostic tool increasingly used in primary care and other medical populations. 11,12 Although it has excellent measurement properties in other settings, it has not been previously validated in patients with PSD. The purpose of this study was to examine the performance of the PHQ-9 as a screening and diagnostic instrument for assessing depression in ischemic stroke survivors. Subjects and MethodsSubjects were patients enrolled in the National Institute for Neurologic Disorders and Stroke-funded AIM (Activate, Initiate treatment, Monitor) PSD study....

Physical activity after stroke may prevent disability and stroke recurrence; yet, physical impairments may inhibit poststroke exercise and subsequently limit recovery. The goal of this study was to elicit barriers to and facilitators of exercise after stroke. We conducted three focus groups and achieved content saturation from 13 stroke survivors--eight men and five women--85% of whom were African American and 15% White, with a mean age of 59 years. We coded and analyzed the transcripts from the focus groups for common themes. Participants across groups reported three barriers (physical impairments from stroke, lack of motivation, and environmental factors) and three facilitators (motivation, social support, and planned activities to fill empty schedule) to exercise after stroke. Exercise activity can provide a purpose and structure to a stroke survivor's daily schedule, which may be interrupted after stroke. In addition, receiving social support from peers and providers, as well as offering stroke-specific exercise programming, may enhance physical activity of stroke survivors including those with disabilities. We intend to incorporate these findings into a post-stroke self-management exercise program.

Background and Purpose-Proxy respondents are often needed to report outcomes in stroke survivors, but they typically systematically rate impairments worse than patients themselves. The magnitude of this difference, the degree of agreement between patients and proxies, and the factors influencing agreement are not well known. Methods-We compared patient and family proxy health-related quality of life (HRQL) responses in 225 patient-proxy pairs enrolled in a clinical trial for poststroke depression. We used paired t-tests and the intraclass correlation (ICC) statistic to evaluate the agreement between patient and proxy domain scores and the overall Stroke-specific Quality of Life (SS-QOL) score. We used multivariate linear regression to model patient-and proxy-reported SS-QOL scores. Results-Patients were older (63 versus 55 years) and less often female (48% versus 74%) than proxies. Proxies rated all domains of SS-SQOL slightly worse than patients. The Mood, Energy, and Thinking domains had the greatest disparity with mean patient-proxy differences of 0.45, 0.37, and 0.37 points, respectively. The ICC for each domain ranged from 0.30 (role function) to 0.59 (physical function). Proxy overall SS-QOL score was also lower (worse) than patient score (3.7 versus 3.4, PϽ0.001) with ICC of 0.41. Agreement was higher among patient-proxy pairs with higher patient depression scores and with lower proxy report of caregiving burden. Conclusions-Proxies systematically report more dysfunction in multiple aspects of HRQL than stroke patients themselves. Agreement between patient and proxy HRQL domain scores is modest at best and is affected by patient depression and proxy perception of burden. These differences may be large enough to impact the outcome assessment in stroke clinical trials.