A two-year longitudinal study of post-stroke mood disorders: dynamic changes in associated variables over the first six months of follow-up.

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Abstract
We are prospectively studying a group of 103 stroke patients over the first 2 years after infarction to determine the variables which are associated with the development of depression. At both 3 and 6 months post-stroke, patients with left hemisphere infarcts showed a strong relationship between severity of depression and distance of the lesion on CT scan from the frontal pole. The strength of this association was unchanged from the immediate post-infarction period. In contrast, the correlation between degree of functional physical impairment and severity of depression steadily increased over the 6 month follow-up. The correlation between severity of depression and Mini-Mental score or between depression and social functioning score dropped between in-hospital and 3 months but then increased significantly between 3 and 6 months post-stroke. Age did not correlate with depression beyond the acute post-stroke period. Whether the increasing strength of the relationships between impairment and depression over ...