Rate of Stroke Death after Depression: A 40-year Longitudinal Study Extension of Chichester/Salisbury Catchment Area Study

These findings suggest that the identification of depressive symptoms at younger ages may have an impact on the primary prevention of stroke in later life. The notion that depression has stronger effects over a long period is consistent with a view that severe clinical depression and physical illness occur concurrently, one exacerbating the other, and health is degraded through slow-acting, cumulative processes. Data were unavailable for the type of stroke or the health-risk behaviors (smoking, diet, and so forth) in the cohort which constituted a limitation of the study. Neither is it known what proportion of the cohort suffered a nonlethal stroke nor to what extent the treatment of clinical depression militates against suffering a lethal stroke.