A one-year follow-up study into the course of depression after stroke

Abstract

Half of PSD patients become depressed within the first month after stroke. Although most patients recover, a clinician has to be aware that symptoms can recur especially in older patients and that in patients with major depression symptoms may be persistent. In these patients treatment should be considered, whereas in patients with limited disease an observational approach may suffice.

Depression after minor stroke: Prevalence and predictors

“…Early-onset PSD was defined as depression diagnosed at 14 ± 2 days. Patients diagnosed at any later follow-ups and did not withdrawn from follow-up before the diagnosis of depression formed late-onset PSD group [17]. Patients who were not diagnosed with depression at any of the four follow-up visits were included in the non-depressed group.…”

Cerebral Microbleeds as a Predictor of 1-Year Outcome of Poststroke Depression

“…[1][2][3][4] One possible explanation is the low rate of antidepressant or psychological treatment received by our patients. In line with the literature, the baseline stroke severity and depression severity predicted nonremission of PSD.…”

“…In a recent study of 138 stroke survivors, nonremission of PSD was associated with more disabling stroke and severe depression. 3 The main limitation of this study was the small sample size and the relatively high attrition of patients for follow-up, which reduced its statistical power. Furthermore, the stroke severity of the final study sample was mild.…”

“…The rate of remission of poststroke depression (PSD) at 1 year varies from 44% to 60%. [1][2][3][4] Possible clinical predictors of nonremission are older age, low level of education, more severe stroke, and depression at baseline. 3 No data have been published on brain imaging variables as possible predictors of nonremission in PSD.…”

A Two-Phase Pathogenetic Model of Depression after Stroke

“…Studies that reported group means in depression questionnaires without distinguishing between subclinical symptoms and depressive disorder were not included. Ten prospective longitudinal studies fulfilled these criteria for PSD [8,9,13,[15][16][17][18][19][20][21] . The rates of patients classified as depressive were pooled and averaged across studies, so that the resulting mean rates were weighted according to the sample size.…”