Poststroke Anxiety and Depression: Findings from Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Anxiety and depression are the two most frequent neuropsychiatric manifestations of stroke. In Saudi Arabia, there is a general lack of research into anxiety and depression in stroke patients when compared with physical complications. We assessed the prevalence of anxiety and depression in 76 stroke patients from Saudi Arabia using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS). In this study, 18.4% and 23.7% of the patients met the HADS criteria for moderate or severe anxiety and depression, respectively. Female gender was the only significant predictive factor associated with both anxiety (P = .03) and depression (P = .04), where longer duration since stroke was only associated with anxiety (P = .02) but not depression (P = .25). These results suggest that anxiety and depression are commonplace in Saudi patients with stroke, a finding that has implications for clinical practice and future research.