Other effects of stroke will also affect your behaviour. Pain can make you irritable, for example. Frustration at not being able to do things for yourself can build up and make you angry or even aggressive towards others. Fatigue (tiredness that doesn't improve with rest) is common after a stroke.
Stroke patients may show aggressive behaviors including hitting or hurting others, kicking, biting, grabbing, pushing, throwing objects, etc. Their verbal behavior also includes cursing, screaming, making noises, hostile muttering, etc. This overt aggression is observed usually during the acute stage in patients.
Aggressive behavior after stroke has been found to occur frequently in the acute stage of recovery. In a study of 202 acute stroke patients, anger was present in 35% of patients. Furthermore, 37% of angry stroke patients were severely angry.
Stroke impacts the brain, and the brain controls our behavior and emotions. You or your loved one may experience feelings of irritability, forgetfulness, carelessness or confusion. Feelings of anger, anxiety or depression are also common.
Sometimes a stroke causes changes in the brain that alter a person's ability to process information and understand others. Some of these changes, such as lack of empathy or increased impulsiveness, can result in feeling angry more frequently.
Medically reviewed by Courtney Maher, OTR/L. If your loved one appears more self-centered after stroke, try not to take things personally. Usually, self-centered behavior has nothing to do with vanity or selfishness. Rather, it's often a result of the neurological impact of stroke.
How Does a Stroke Impact Life Expectancy? Despite the likelihood of making a full recovery, life expectancy after stroke incidents can decrease. Unfortunately, researchers have observed a wide range of life expectancy changes in stroke patients, but the average reduction in lifespan is nine and a half years.
Pseudobulbar Affect (PBA)
PBA is a neurological condition caused by damage to the brain. It's characterized by intense and often inappropriate displays of emotion that have nothing to do with how you truly feel at the moment. For example, you may suddenly laugh when seeing someone hurt or cry in response to a joke.
Another personality change that occurs after stroke is impulsiveness. This is characterized as the inability to think ahead or understand consequences. Impulsiveness is more commonly seen in people with right-side or a frontal lobe stroke.
Psychosis can develop within the first few days following a stroke or can have delayed-onset by several weeks or months [9]. The risk of developing psychosis, after moderate to severe TBI, is at most two years after injury [4].
Recovery time after a stroke is different for everyone—it can take weeks, months, or even years. Some people recover fully, but others have long-term or lifelong disabilities.
A stroke can damage parts of the brain that are linked to the emotions, leading to problems with controlling emotions. Some people have difficulty controlling their mood, and seem angry or irritable, which can put a strain on relationships. Some people find that they become more sexual, or lose inhibitions.
The stroke recovery process is long and can come with many challenges, including the feeling that symptoms are getting worse instead of better. However, know that regression after stroke is common and often temporary. This can be impacted by factors such as new medications, schedule changes, or excess fatigue.
You may experience physical or emotional abuse in your time as a caregiver. This is because many people who experience a stroke have personality changes that can cause them to become abusive to those closest to them. Abuse may include physical actions such as hitting, biting, or scratching.
Although stroke effects are unpredictable, mood disorders such as depression, anxiety and pseudo-bulbar affect are all too common. Studies suggest that simply having a stroke increases the risk of anxiety, depression or both.
Mental illnesses that are commonly associated with stroke are depression [38], anxiety [39], fatigue [40], sleep disturbances [41], and emotionalism [42].
Stroke is characterised by an acute onset of neurological symptoms, which are usually motor-related. However, personality changes such as impulsiveness and disinhibition can be explained by fronto-cortical damage.
After surviving a stroke, a stroke survivor may become less empathetic towards others. Empathy is the ability to see things from another person's perspective. Empathy is especially important when it comes to understanding how another person is feeling.
Apathy is a behavioral syndrome characterized by a loss of motivation that occurs in one-third of patients after stroke. Post-stroke patients with apathy suffer from greater functional impairment and demonstrate slower recovery times to normal functioning.
Patients with stroke experience cognitive decline that is faster than that of stroke-free controls from 1 to 3 years after onset. An increased rate of decline is associated with older age and recurrent stroke.
Even after surviving a stroke, you're not out of the woods, since having one makes it a lot more likely that you'll have another. In fact, of the 795,000 Americans who will have a first stroke this year, 23 percent will suffer a second stroke.
For example, 79% of people survive 2 years, 61% survive 3 years, …, 5% survive 16 years, and only 1% survive 20 years.