IntroductionAim of the study: The evaluation of the usefulness of the PSDRS in detecting affective disorders. Examination of the correlation of depressed mood states with cognitive disorders in patients at an early stage of cerebral stroke. Attempt at a comparison of the effectiveness of detecting depressive and cognitive disorders with the application of selected clinical scales.Material and MethodsThe examination included 43 patients within the first week after cerebral stroke. It was carried out with the application of two screening scales: Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE), the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) and two scales for the evaluation of the degree of depressiveness: Post-stroke Depression Scale (PSDRS) and Beck Depression Inventory (BDI).ResultsA significant, negative correlation of the results of the PSDRS and MoCA scales was shown. Depressed moods in patients after cerebral stroke in a significant way statistically correlated with the disorders in the selected cognitive skills: visual and spatial functions, memory, attention functions and abstracting ability.ConclusionsThe PSDRS and MoCA scales proved to be more effective tools of the evaluation of depressive and cognitive disorders in patients at an early stage after cerebral stroke, than it was observed in the case of conventionally applied MMSE and BDI scales. The examination results additionally prove a significant dependence between mood and the efficiency of cognitive functions in this group of patients. With the weakening of cognitive functioning, also the patients’ mood became depressed.