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ABSTRACT
Objective. To examine possible risk factors in post-stroke depression (PSD) other than site of lesion in the brain
Data sources. 191 rst-ever stroke patients were examined physically shortly after their stroke and examined
psychiatrically and physically 4 months post-stroke.
Setting. A geographically dened segment of the metropolitan area of Perth, Western Australia, from which all
strokes over a course of 18 months were examined (the Perth Community Stroke Study).
Measures. Psychiatric Assessment Schedule, Mini Mental State Examination, Barthel Index, Frenchay Activities
Index, physical illness and sociodemographic data were collected. Post-stroke depression (PSD) included both major
depression and minor depression (dysthymia without the 2-year time stipulation) according to DSM-III (American
Psychiatric Association) criteria. Patients depressed at the time of the stroke were excluded.
Patients. 191 rst-ever stroke patients, 111M, 80F, 28% had PSD, 17% major and 11% minor depression.
Results. Signicant associations with PSD at 4 months were major functional impairment, living in a nursing
home, being divorced and having a high pre-stroke alcohol intake (M only). There was no signicant association
with age,
sex, social class, cognitive impairment or pre-stroke physical illness.
Conclusion. Results favoured the hypothesis that depression in an unselected group of stroke patients is no more
common, and of no more specic aetiology, than it is among elderly patients with other physical illness.
In the past two decades much has been written of the lesion in the brain is the single most
about the aetiology of post-stroke depression important risk factor in the development of PSD
(PSD), the most common psychiatric condition (Robinson et al., 1984; Robinson and Starkstein,
following stroke. Three themes about PSD are 1990). They have claimed that the frequency of
discernible in the literature: the relationship PSD is higher in patients with lesions in the left
between PSD and location of the lesion in the hemisphere rather than the right hemisphere, and
brain (Robinson and Starkstein, 1990), that PSD is
predominantly secondary to social factors (House, that the highest incidence is in those with damage
1987a) and the view that the incidence of depres- to the left anterior region of the brain. However,
sion after stroke is much the same as with other recent reviews of the literature conclude that the
physical illnesses of acute onset (House, 1987a). data reported so far do not allow rm conclusions
Robinson and his co-workers from the Johns to be drawn about characteristics of cerebral
Hopkins University in Baltimore have been the lesions in PSD (House, 1987b; Lishman, 1988;
strongest advocates for the view that the location Primeau, 1988; Johnson, 1991).
The recent literature on PSD has identied other
risk factors for depression, including age, male
*Correspondence to: Professor P. W. Burvill, Department gender, personality development, neuroticism,
of Psychiatry and Behavioural Science, The University of degree of disability, lack of social support, disrup-
Western Australia, Nedlands WA 6009, Western Australia. tion of social roles, dependence on others for
Tel: (09) 346 2174. Fax: (09) 346 3828.
activities of daily living, negative life events and
CCC 0885 6230/97/020219
08
# 1997 by John Wiley & Sons,
Ltd.
RISK FACTORS FOR POST-STROKE DEPRESSION 1
both personal and family history of aective et al. (1995a,b). This study overcame the major
disorders and anxiety (Castillo and Robinson, objections to former studies of PSD in being a
1991; Morris et al., 1992; Burvill, 1994). Socio- broadly based community investigation rather
demographic factors such as age, sex, level of than including only highly selected stroke patients.
education and marital status have not generally A suciently large number of subjects was studied,
been documented as important (Johnson, 1991). and the localization of the lesion in the brain
was determined by conventional neuroanatomical
In their review of the literature, both House means. A study of 117 survivors of rst-ever stroke
(1987a) and Primeau (1988) concluded that it is in the PCSS found no support for the assertion that
unproven whether depression is more common in location of the lesion is a prime factor in the
an unselected group of patients after strokes than occurrence of PSD at 4 months post-stroke (Burvill
it et al., 1996). The authors advocated that a much
is among the elderly with other physical illnesses. broader range of variables should be studied, as the
Factors such as admission to hospital, family aetiology of PSD is likely to be multifactorial. The
pressures, bereavement and socialization make aim of this article is to examine a range of possible
comparison of these two groups especially dicult risk factors in PSD other than site of lesion, using
data from the PCSS.
(Morris and Raphael, 1987).
Depression is common among the physically ill
(Cohen-Cole and Stoudemire, 1987). Most studies METHOD
of medical inpatients have reported a prevalence of
depression of between 10 and 20%, and some even Details of case ascertainment and baseline assess-
higher (Evans, 1993; Finch et al., 1992; O'Riordan ment of patients seen in the PCSS have been
et al., 1989). Some medical conditions that are described in full by Anderson et al. (1993). Briey,
associated with a high risk of stroke, such as all residents of a geographically dened segment of
hypertension (Wells et al., 1989), diabetes mellitus the Perth metropolitan area (estimated population
(Gavard et al., 1993) and cancer (Brown and 69 008 males and 69 700 females at June 30, 1989)
Paraskevas, 1982), may be associated with a high who had a stroke in the 18 months between
incidence of PSD, independent of any eect of a February 20, 1989 and August 19, 1990 were
stroke. Fractured neck of femur is a physical included. Multiple community-wide overlapping
condition of sudden onset like stroke, aecting sources were used to ascertain the cases. These
predominantly elderly people and associated with included notications from general practitioners,
admission to hospital similar to stroke. Billig et al. scrutiny of all attendances at and admissions to all
(1986) reported a frequency of depression in such hospitals and nursing homes, coroners' reports and
patients 10 days after admission of 28%. What is death registrations, and monitoring of computer-
striking about the literature is that the prevalence ized hospital discharge statistics.
of depression found in a wide variety of physical All patients were seen as soon as possible after
conditions is very similar and within the range an event by the study registrar (CSA), who
reported for PSD. conducted a standardized interview and physical
Less work has been done on depression in examination to conrm that they had had a stroke.
vascular dementia, but Cummings et al. (1987) Stroke was dened according to WHO criteria
and Erkinjuntti (1987) have reported prevalences (Hatono, 1978) and the new special report from the
of depressive illness around 28% and Ballard et al. Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke
(1993) 20%. These ndings are similar to those (Whisnant et al., 1990). A total of 492 patients were
reported in the early stages of Alzheimer's disease detected of whom 408 were seen by CSA. Sixty-
(Ballard et al., 1993). All these studies raise the nine per cent had had their rst-ever stroke.
possibility of a link between the cognitive impair- Eighty-three patients had died before being seen
ment after a stroke and PSD. by the registrar and only one patient refused to
The Perth Community Stroke Study (PCSS) take part in the study. The evaluation of each
was a community-based study of the incidence, patient at baseline and at follow-up at 4 and
aetiology and outcome of all strokes in the 12 months included the use of the Mini-Mental
population from a dened geographical area over State Examination (MMSE) (Folstein et al., 1975),
a period of 18 months in Perth, Western Australia the Frenchay Activities Index (FAI) (Holbrook
(Anderson et al., 1993). The prevalence of depres-
sion (23%) and anxiety (11%) among survivors at
4 months after stroke has been reported by Burvill
and Shilbeck, 1983) and the Barthel Index (BI) non-hierarchical approach to diagnosis was used
(Mahoney and Barthel, 1965). The BI and FAI are with the PAS data so that patients were assigned all
well-validated, established, commonly used mea- the DSM-III diagnoses for which they satised the
sures in the assessment of function in stroke criteria. PSD was dened as those who had either
patients. The BI (score of 0 20) is a measure major depression (DSM-III) or minor depression.
of activities of daily living, whereas the FAI (score Patients with minor depression were those who
of satised the DSM-III diagnostic criteria for
0 60) is an objective measure of social dysthymia, but not the requirement for a duration
activities such as domestic duties, shopping, social of 2 years, in accordance with the criteria adopted
outings, by Robinson and his colleagues in their studies of
gardening, travel, hobbies and gainful work. The post-stroke depression in Baltimore (Starkstein
patients' usual occupation was used to classify and Robinson, 1989). Those depressed at the time
them into a social class, according to categories of the stroke (6M, 11F) were excluded from the
analysis.
1 6 dened by the Classication of Occupations
The protocol for the study was approved by the
of
Committee for Human Rights of the University of
the Australian Bureau of Statistics (1980). House-
Western Australia.
wives and those retired were classied on the basis
of their longest held occupation. Twenty per cent
of all patients were managed entirely outside RESULTS
hospital, either at home or in a nursing home.
The case fatality was 24% at 28 days and 38% at Age and sex
12 months post-stroke. Of the 191 (111M, 80F) rst-ever stroke patients,
When seen again at 4 months after the index 54 (28%) were depressed, 33 (17%) with major
event, 318 patients from the original cohort were depression and 21 (11%) with minor depression.
still alive. Seven patients had emigrated from Thirty (27%) of the men and 24 (30%) of the
Australia. The remaining 311 patients were women were depressed. A higher proportion of the
assessed physically by CSA, of whom 248 were males aged less than 60 years (48%) than those
assessed by a consultant psychiatrist, either PWB aged 60 years or older (20%) were depressed. The
or GAJ. Four patients died before being seen by corresponding frequencies for females were 23%
the psychiatrists and 13 refused to see a psychia- and 31%. None of these dierences was statisti-
trist. Forty-three patients were severely demented cally signicant. There was very little dierence in
and three were so severely aphasic that full the proportion depressed in the 10-year age groups
psychiatric assessment was not made. Of the 248 in those 60 years and older.
patients assessed by a psychiatrist, 191 had rst-
ever strokes. These 191 rst-ever stroke patients
are reported in this article. Marital status
Patients were seen in their own homes, in nursing A higher proportion of those divorced (40%) or
homes, or occasionally in the psychiatrist's oce. separated (33%) were depressed than those single
Each patient was assessed psychiatrically using the (21%), married/de facto (20%) or widowed (28%).
Psychiatric Assessment Schedule (PAS) (Dean
et al., 1983), which is a modication of the Present
State Examination (PSE) (Wing et al., 1974) and Living arrangements
enables both PSE and DSM-III diagnoses to be Only 17% of those living alone 4 months post-
derived. Both psychiatrists had been trained in the stroke were depressed compared with 25% of those
use of the PSE. Careful enquiry was made of each in rehabilitation hospitals, 31% living with their
patient, and of relatives where available, as to the spouse or relatives and 45% in nursing homes.
presence or absence of any psychiatric disorder,
especially of depression or anxiety disorder, at the Physical condition prior to stroke
time of the index stroke.
Table 1 outlines a number of selected physical
conditions at the time of the stroke, giving the
Analysis percentage of patients depressed at 4 months
post-stroke in those with the physical condition
All data were collected on precoded inter-
view forms and entered onto a database held
in a mini-computer for analysis using SAS
(1991) and EGRET (1991) statistical packages. A
Table 1. Pre-stroke physical illness, alcohol intake and PSD at 4 months (percentages)
Feature 2
Prevalenc % depressed in % depressed in those
e of those with Signicance without feature
feature feature
Cardiovascular disorders
History of hypertension 62 28 29 0.014 NS
Hypertension under treatment 70 24 37 1.97 NS
Exertional angina 27 23 30 0.95 NS
Prior myocardial infarction 18 20 30 1.45 NS
Intermittent claudication 14 30 28 0.39 NS
Other
History of malignancy 20 18 30 2.18 NS
History of diabetes mellitus 12 36 27 0.89 NS
Alcohol intake per week
male
>140 g 33 50 17 12.29 < 0.001
>280 g 23 50 21 7.59 < 0.01
female
>140 g 8 50 29 1.28 NS
and in those who did not have that condition. were functionally impaired with a BI less than 16
These fall into four major groups, hypertension, ( p < 0:01) and an FAI less than 31 ( p <
other cardiovascular conditions, malignancy 0:01) (Table 2).
and diabetes mellitus. There were no statistical
dier- ences in the prevalence of depression in
those patients with and in those without these Cognitive impairment
conditions. There was no dierence in the level of cognitive
impairment at 4 months post-stroke, as measured
Alcohol intake by the MMSE, in the depressed and non-depressed
patients. In each 11% scored 1 18, 20%
There was a signicantly higher percentage of scored
depression at 4 months post-stroke in males who 19 23 and 69% 24 30. The mean MMSE
drank either more than 140 g of alcohol per week was almost identical in the depressed (24.3) and
(50%) ( p < 0:001) or more than 280 per week non- depressed patients (24.6).
(50%) ( p < 0:01) than in those who drank
less than these amounts (Table 1). The
frequency of depression in those women who Social class
drank more than At 4 months post-stroke 36% of patients in
140 g per week was higher than in those who drank social classes 5 and 6 were depressed compared
less but this dierence was not statistically with 25% of those in social classes 1 4.
signicant. These dierences were not statistically signicant.
CONCLUSION