A Microanalysis of Mood and Self-Reported Functionality in Stroke Patients Using Ecological Momentary Assessment.

Post-stroke depression has been repeatedly associated with the degree of functional and cognitive impairment. The present study aimed to conduct a microanalysis on this association and examined the association between mood and self-reported functionality in 20 stroke patients (6 females, age: M = 59.9, SD = 5.2) using ecological momentary assessments (EMA), a structured diary method capturing moment-to-moment variations. Mood and self-reported functionality were recorded via a smartphone-app eight times a day for seven consecutive days during inpatient rehabilitation care. The patients answered on average to 73.2% of the received prompts. Variability in patients' responses was caused by differences both between and within patients. Multilevel regression analyses revealed that mood and self-reported functionality were significantly associated at the same point in time, but only patients' mood predicted their self-reported functionality at the next assessment point in time-lagged analyses. These results remained stable after controlling for between-person differences as patients' age, staff-ratings of their awareness of illness, and their degree of functional independence. Patients' mood appeared to affect their future ratings of their functionality but not the other way around.
Competing Interests: VV and AP were employed by VAMED Klinik Hattingen GmbH, Rehabilitation Centre for Neurology, Neurosurgery, Neuropaediatrics, Hattingen, Germany. PZ, CP, and JB were employed by MediClin Klinik Reichshof, Rehabilitation Centre for Neurology and Pneumology, Reichshof-Eckenhagen, Germany. The remaining authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
(Copyright © 2022 Forster, Gauggel, Loevenich, Völzke, Petershofer, Zimmermann, Privou, Bonnert and Mainz.)