An Empirical Study of Personality Change After Stroke

Abstract

16 Personality changes after stroke are not well understood. There are three specific areas that need to be examined: 1) the dimensions of personality vulnerable to change post-stroke, 2) the extent to which personality patterns converge to a unitary “Organic Personality Disorder” or reflect exaggerations of premorbid personality features; and, 3) the contribution of pre-morbid personality characteristics to post-stroke depression. Toward this end, close relatives of ischemic stroke patients rated pre- and post-stroke personality patterns with the NEO Personality Inventory-Revised (NEO-PI-R; Costa & McCrae, 1985), a standard personality measure. Non-parametric comparison tests (Bonferroni corrections were used to adjust the alpha level for each set of multiple comparisons) showed significant changes in 3 of 5 personality domains assessed by the NEO. These included higher neuroticism ( p p p p p p p p 2 =.26, p 2 =.19, p 2 =.15, p 2 =.25, p