Transient ischemic attack (TIA), also called mini-strokes, can increase the risk of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), reveals a new study.
TIA causes limited blood supply to a patient's brain. TIA is temporary and does not last for more than five minutes; it also will not cause permanent damage to the brain.
PTSD is a psychiatric disorder that usually develops when a person is exposed to trauma or life-threating events such as serious accident, sexual abuse, war and more. Veterans of war and emergency workers are usually at a higher risk of developing PTSD.
Prior studies have established a link between a full stroke and the risk of developing PTSD. However, the latest study is the first to find a link between PTSD and TIA.
Kathrin Utz, a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Neurology at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany, also the author of the study, reveals that one in every three TIA patients usually develops PTSD.
The researchers examined more than 100 TIA patients who did not have any prior history of full stroke. The participants were evaluated after completing a number of questionnaires regarding individual mental state.
The study found that around 30 percent of the respondents had PTSD symptoms. Around 14 percent of the total TIA patients displayed significantly low mental quality of life and about 7 percent showed reduced physical quality of life.
The TIA patients already suffering from PTSD exhibited greater symptoms of anxiety, depression as well as reduced quality of life.
The researchers believe that a patient's behavior such as fear of getting a stroke and become anxious following a TIA is probably because they are developing PTSD.
"When experienced together, the symptoms from TIA and depression pose a significant psychological burden on the affected patient; therefore, it comes as no surprise that we also found TIA patients with PTSD have a measurably lower sense of quality of life," says Utz.
The authors also believe that patients who adopt coping strategies like denying the issue and turning to drugs are at higher risk of developing PTSD post TIA.
Utz suggests that TIA patients should be given risk counseling as well as positive adaptive approaches so that they can cope well with TIA.
More research is needed to understand why some TIA patients develop PTSD and some do not.
The findings have been published in American Heart Association journal Stroke.
