Depression associated with stroke

Serious physical illness naturally leads to emotional disturbance, particularly when the illness is disabling or life-threatening, so it is not surprising that stroke is associated with mood disorder, manifested as an increase either in general levels of distress or in the rate of clinically diagnosable states. In recent years, considerable interest has been expressed in the idea that there is more to it than that; that in fact affective disorder-and more specifically depressive disorder-is a specific complication of stroke. The quasi-diagnostic use of the term poststroke depression tends to reinforce belief in this notion of depression associated with stroke as being something special. If depression is indeed a specific complication of stroke, then we should expect to find evidence in one of three spheres. First, perhaps the basic clinical phenomena are different in stroke: there may be specific depressive syndromes not found in other physical disorders, on the rates of depressive disorder may be higher than those found in other illnesses of equivalent severity, or the natural history may be different for any depressive disorder that does exist. Second, whatever the appearance of depression may be, its etiology may be different in stroke. And third, it may be that depression associated with stroke has different characteristics in response to treatment that suggest it is not like depression associated with other physical illnesses. DEPRESSIVE DISORDERS ASSOCIATED WITH STROKE