Positive emotion following a stroke.

OBJECTIVE Interest in exploring the positive emotional health of adults has increased. The current study investigated the positive emotion of adults with stroke at discharge from in-patient medical rehabilitation and 3 months post-discharge. DESIGN A longitudinal study in which information was collected during in-patient medical rehabilitation stay and 3 months post-discharge. SUBJECTS The study included 856 persons with stroke aged 55 years or older. RESULTS Mean age for the sample was 72.5 years, 78.7% of subjects were non-Hispanic white and 51.9% were women. Mean length of hospital stay was 20.2 days. More than one-third of patients reported higher positive emotion over the 3-month follow-up, while 29.7% reported lower positive emotion. In addition to discharge positive emotion, 4 factors, including depression, level of education and motor and cognition functional status score, significantly predicted lower depression at 3-month follow-up. CONCLUSION A large percentage of adults reported high positive emotion in the initial months following a stroke. This finding adds to work on stroke recovery and indicates the emotional resilience of adults when faced with a health challenge. Understanding the role of positive emotion in persons living with stroke may provide insight into long-term recovery.