Post-Stroke Depression can be Treated with Antidepressant

About 40 to 50 percent of patients who survive a stroke develop a post-stroke depression according to the UIHealth.care website. Strokes vary in their effect, depending on the amount of tissue damage. The difficulty finding words to paralysis, weakness, loss of motor control, and disturbance in thinking, feeling, writing, memory, speech and emotional functioning range the scope of effect from mild to stronger effect. According to the United States National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, many patients who survive stroke feel fear, anxiety, frustration, anger, sadness, and a sense of grief for their physical and mental losses. The effect of clinical depression in a person is evident when the person feels hopelessness and is becoming unproductive. The emotional disorder is the most commonly experienced by stroke survivors. Sleep disturbances and a radical change in eating patterns that may lead to sudden weight loss or gain, lethargy, social withdrawal, irritability, fatigue, self-loathing, and suicidal thoughts are some of the signs of clinical depression. The medications for post-stroke depression are antidepressant drugs. However, antidepressant medications such as Zoloft can cause Zoloft birth defects which are evident in the case of the Hodge family from Ohio filing a Zoloft birth defect lawsuit against Pfizer, the manufacturer, and Cardinal Health, the distributor of Zoloft. Their son was allegedly born with anencephaly, which is a neural tube defect that is described as the “absence of a large part of the brain and skull. It was only for 18 hours that their child lived and died due to birth defect. A pregnant woman is prone of a birth defect if she is taking Zoloft or another antidepressant in the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI's. SSRIs are defined in the About.com website as a class of medications used as a treatment of psychological conditions, including depression and anxiety disorders. What is involved in a person's mood is serotonin which is the chemical in the brain. Some people do not have the appropriate levels of serotonin in their brain, leading to feelings of depression and/or anxiety. The increase of levels of serotonin in the brain and improving the mood of a patient is caused by SSRIs. In the recent study conducted by the University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics, researchers strongly believe that both physical and intellectual impairments are significantly improved when a post-stroke depression is successfully treated with an antidepressant medication. However, there can also be an option which is a psychological counseling. Due to several side effects caused by the antidepressant drug Zoloft such as Zoloft birth defect among pregnant women, close monitoring and supervision by the patient's health provider is being advised.