Depression and Subthreshold Depression in Stroke-Related Aphasia

Objective: To investigate the prevalence of depression and subthreshold depression in persons with aphasia. To investigate whether there are linguistic and cognitive differences between those with depression, subthreshold depression, and no depression.

Design: Survey.

Setting: Rehabilitation hospital.

Participants: Participants with chronic aphasia due to a single left-hemisphere stroke (N=144).

Main outcome measures: Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale to assess the prevalence of depression. The Western Aphasia Battery-Revised (WAB-R) to evaluate the type of aphasia; the Aphasia Quotient measured the severity of linguistic deficits.

Results: The prevalence of depression in our participants was 19.44% while that of subthreshold depression was 22.22%. Depressed persons with aphasia had significantly lower WAB-R reading scores than those without depression.

Conclusions: Findings suggest that persons with aphasia who have depressive symptoms may do worse on some linguistic measures than those with no depression. Since subthreshold depression can progress to depression, clinicians should routinely screen for depressive symptoms.