Post Stroke Depression

Post-stroke depression is the most frequent and the most important neuropsychiatric consequence of a stroke. Almost half of the stroke survivors experience depression and this may result in the most adverse effects like functional recovery, mental recovery and survival.

In medical terms Post Stroke Depression (PSD) is frequently called as mood disorder due to general medical conditions. The depression symptoms include major depressive episodes like manic features or mixed features. By using the personal and social data of the patient from the hospital admission, community surveys or the previous studies of the patient in the clinic, the medical stream has succeeded in identifying two different types of depressive disorders associated with the cerebral ischemia. They are

Major Depression: It occurs around 25% to 30 % of the stroke patients.

Minor Depression: It has been defined for the medical purposes as a depressed mood or loss of interest and has atleast two of the major depression symptoms. This type of depression occur upto almost 30% of the stroke patients.

The scientific community related to this field is divided into two groups. One group has proposed that a primary biological mechanism in which the strokes affect the neural tissues that are involved in mood regulation which results in the PSD. While the other group claims that the PSD is caused due to the social, psychological and personal stress that come out as a consequence of stroke.

Studies show that even when integrated bio-socio-psychological model that includes both biological and psychological aspects of PSD seems warranted, studies show that the biological mechanism play a major role in the development of PSD.

* It is proved that the stroke patients show a higher rate of depression compared to the patients with disabilities of comparable severity.

* It is also proved that the patients suffering from anosognosia who are still not aware of their disability still develop post stroke depression.

Even after this much evidence, the association of PSD to specific part of the brain is still vague and needs a lot more study develop the exact relation between the PSD and the part of the brain that is affected.

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