Poststroke Anxiety and Depression: Findings from Saudi Arabia.

BACKGROUND: 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.

METHODS: We assessed the prevalence of anxiety and depression in 76 stroke patients from Saudi Arabia using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS).

RESULTS: 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).

CONCLUSIONS: 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.