Long-Term Changes in Poststroke Depressive Symptoms: Effects of Functional Disability and Social Support

What is it about?

Long-term changes of individual depression symptoms in stroke patients have rarely been studied. This study recruited patients with post-stroke depression, and compared the effects of social support and poor functional outcome for each symptoms of post-stroke depression. We found that total depression score and individual symptoms improved along with improvement of functional disability until 6-month, they were aggravated afterwards. Moreover, social support was associated with 'reduced sleep' and 'pessimistic thought', whereas poor functional outcome was associated with all individual symptoms except for 'reduced sleep'. Tailored-strategies should be applied to manage depression in stroke patients.

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