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Mood Disorders in the Year after First Stroke

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Allan House*
Affiliation:
Department of Liaison Psychiatry, Leeds General Infirmary, Great George Street, Leeds LS1 3EX
Martin Dennis
Affiliation:
Department of Clinical Neurosciences, Western General Hospital, Edinburgh
Liz Mogridge
Affiliation:
Department of Clinical Neurology, Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford
Charles Warlow
Affiliation:
Department of Clinical Neuroscience, Western General Hospital, Edinburgh
Keith Hawton
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, Warneford Hospital, Headington, Oxford
Lesley Jones
Affiliation:
Department of Community Medicine, Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford
*
Correspondence

Abstract

An unselected community sample of 128 patients were studied over the 12 months after their first stroke, and compared with a control sample of subjects from the general population. Psychiatric status was assessed using the PSE and BDI. Symptoms of mood disorder were commoner in the stroke patients than the controls, but the differences were not substantial and had largely disappeared by 12 months. Psychiatric problems encountered included agoraphobia, social withdrawal, apathy and self-neglect, irritability and pathological emotionalism. While there was a high cumulative incidence of psychiatric disorder, little of it persisted: only two cases of major depression were present for the whole 12 months. We believe undue emphasis has been placed in the recent literature on major depression as a specific syndrome following stroke.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal College of Psychiatrists 

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