Introduction : Depression is the most common type of psychiatric disorder among
stroke patients. It is considered as a usual reaction that frequently ignored by family
and paramedic. It had been agreed that depression will hampered the neurological
deficits recovery of stroke patients. The research was aimed to examine the influence
of depression to the recovery time of neurological deficits in infarct stroke patient.
Methods : An observation research with prospective study of 70 infarct stroke
subjects. The subjects were infact stroke patients hospitalized in B1 neurology ward
Dr. Kariadi hospital, January 2005 until December 2005. Neurological deficits were
examined with National Institute of Health Stroke Scale (NIHSS) and the depression
was diagnosed with Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS) . Neurological
deficits recovery was examine in II, III, IV, V and VI with NIHSS. The patient has
recovered if the score of NIHSS is 5 and not recovered if not reach the score of
NIHSS 5. The result of the research is shown as graphics and survival analysis tables
to know the difference of time recovery. The confounding factor was controlled with
logistic regression analysis. The level of significant used this research is with
p < 0.05).
Results : Subjects without depressed mental state recovered in 3.88 weeks (95% CI
3.37; 4.39) and subjects with depressed mental state recovered in 5.78 weeks (95%
CI 5.05; 6.06). Confounding factors that influence to recovery time of improve
neurological deficits were age with p = 0.021 and course result of neurological
deficit examination at first week with p = 0.001.
Conclusions : Stroke patients with depression require more time to recover from
neurological deficits compared with non depression stroke patients.
Key Words : Post stroke depression – NIHSS – survival analysi
