Post-Stroke Depression: A Review

Poststroke depression (PSD) has been recognized by psychiatrists for more than 100 years, but controlled systematic studies did not begin until the 1970s. Meta-analyses addressing almost all major clinical issues in the field have emerged because of the relatively small number of patients included in some stroke studies. In order to build large databases, these meta-analyses have merged patients with rigorously assessed mood disorders with major depressive features with patients scoring above arbitrary cutoff points on depression rating scales, thus missing important findings such as cognitive impairment associated with major but not minor depression. Nevertheless, PSD occurs in a significant number of…