Personality changes after a stroke can include: Not feeling like doing anything. Being irritable or aggressive. Being disinhibited – saying or doing things that seem inappropriate to others.
Relationship problems
Other things can affect intimacy, like communication difficulties and low mood or anxiety. Having a stroke can affect your confidence and self-image. You may both find it difficult to talk about how you feel, because you think you should 'stay strong' for your partner.
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.
Personality Changes are Common
After a stroke, you might feel more anxious, lose interest in hobbies or laugh or cry uncontrollably. These symptoms may be upsetting to you and your loved ones and can affect quality of life.
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.
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.
Changes in your emotions and to your personality are common after stroke. It's very normal to experience strong emotions after stroke, however these emotional reactions usually get better with time. Longer-term emotional and personality changes can be very challenging.
Anger. You may get angry more often after you've had a stroke. It can be linked to many things, including your feelings of grief, loss and frustration about your stroke. It can also be linked with changes in the brain making it hard to control your emotions.
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.
Mental illnesses that are commonly associated with stroke are depression [38], anxiety [39], fatigue [40], sleep disturbances [41], and emotionalism [42].
A review of studies published after 1980 shows alarmingly high post-injury divorce rates ranging from 48% to 78%. There is little doubt that brain injury can strain marriages. Spouses often take on many of the injured person's responsibilities, though they may have little experience with their new responsibilities.
Although every stroke is different and each recovery is unique, emotional changes and physical disabilities are likely to change a survivor's marriage. While some people may recover quickly, others may need long-term support to regain their independence. Relationship problems after stroke are not uncommon.
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.
Uncontrolled Emotions
After a stroke, you might have sudden, unpredictable changes in your emotions. This is called pseudobulbar affect (PBA). With PBA, you could have outbursts of emotion that don't match the situation you're in. You might laugh at something sad, or cry at something funny.
After a stroke, you may have difficulty speaking. It may also be difficult to understand others when they speak or gesture to you. Reading and writing may be difficult. Your speech pathologist will work with you to develop a rehabilitation program.
Vascular dementia, which is commonly associated with left-hemisphere stroke, impacts reasoning, planning, judgment, memory and other thought processes. It's caused by brain damage from impaired blood flow and other conditions that damage blood vessels and reduce circulation.
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.
Both the frontal lobe and the limbic system play large roles in emotions. When a stroke damages the emotion center of the brain, it can result in a condition known as pseudobulbar affect, which causes uncontrollable emotional outbursts. Pseudobulbar affect is also common following a brainstem stroke.
Antidepressants such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) may help reduce anger after a stroke. Specifically, an SSRI called fluoxetine (Prozac) has been shown to help improve “post-stroke anger proneness” – even 3 months after discontinuation of treatment.
Strokes that block a brain artery usually cause a range of symptoms that may include vascular dementia. But some strokes don't cause any noticeable symptoms. These silent strokes still increase dementia risk.
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].