Deans' stroke musings: Generalized Anxiety Disorder in Stroke Patients

Changing stroke rehab and research worldwide now.Time is Brain! trillions and trillions of neurons that DIE each day because there are NO effective hyperacute therapies besides tPA(only 12% effective). I have 523 posts on hyperacute therapy, enough for researchers to spend decades proving them out. These are my personal ideas and blog on stroke rehabilitation and stroke research. Do not attempt any of these without checking with your medical provider. Unless you join me in agitating, when you need these therapies they won't be there.

What this blog is for:

My blog is not to help survivors recover, it is to have the 10 million yearly stroke survivors light fires underneath their doctors, stroke hospitals and stroke researchers to get stroke solved. 100% recovery. The stroke medical world is completely failing at that goal, they don't even have it as a goal. Shortly after getting out of the hospital and getting NO information on the process or protocols of stroke rehabilitation and recovery I started searching on the internet and found that no other survivor received useful information. This is an attempt to cover all stroke rehabilitation information that should be readily available to survivors so they can talk with informed knowledge to their medical staff. It lays out what needs to be done to get stroke survivors closer to 100% recovery. It's quite disgusting that this information is not available from every stroke association and doctors group.

Thursday, December 8, 2016

Generalized Anxiety Disorder in Stroke Patients

With a 28% rate of this in stroke survivors I still bet your doctor is doing absolutely nothing to address this after 20 years. Is your doctor correlating this to the 33% of stroke survivors getting depressed? And does your doctor know the difference and different treatments needed?
http://stroke.ahajournals.org/content/27/2/270

A 3-Year Longitudinal Study

http://dx.doi.org/10.1161/01.STR.27.2.270

Stroke. 1996;27:270-275

Originally published February 1, 1996

Abstract

Background and Purpose This prospective study examined the prevalence and longitudinal course of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) after stroke and its comorbidity with major depression over time. The contributions of lesion characteristics, functional impairment, and psychosocial factors to the development of GAD after stroke were studied.

Methods In a population-based cohort of 80 patients with acute stroke, we assessed GAD and comorbid major depression, functional ability, and social network at regular time points over 3 years. Cerebral atrophy and brain lesion parameters were determined from CT scans performed at the acute stage and after 3 years.

Results The prevalence of GAD after stroke was 28% in the acute stage, and there was no significant decrease through the 3 years of follow-up. At 1 year, only 23% of the patients with early GAD (0 to 3 months) had recovered; those not recovered at this follow-up had a high risk of a chronic development of the anxiety disorder. Comorbidity with major depression was high and seemed to impair the prognosis of depression. At the acute stage after stroke, GAD plus depression was associated with left hemispheric lesion, whereas anxiety alone was associated with right hemispheric lesion. Cerebral atrophy was associated with both depression and anxiety disorder late but not early after stroke. Dependence in activities of daily living and reduced social network were associated with GAD at all follow-up periods except at the acute stage.

Conclusions GAD after stroke is a common and long-lasting affliction that interferes substantially with social life and functional recovery. There is a differentiation of factors implicated in its development based on the period of time since the stroke event.