A longitudinal study of depression from 1 to 5 years after spinal cord injury

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Study examined the course of probable major depression among a group of 1, 035 participants with spinal cord injury (SCI) from 16 SCI Model System centers who were assessed at 1 and 5 years after injury. Probable major depression, defined as Physician Health Questionnaire-9 score of 10 or higher, was found in 21 percent of participants at year 1 and 18 percent at year 5. Similar numbers of participants had improvement (25 percent) or worsening (20 percent) of symptoms over time, with 8.7 percent depressed at both 1 and 5 years. Increased pain, worsening health status, and decreasing unsafe use of alcohol were identified as risk factors for the development of depression at 5 years. No predictors of improvement in depression were found. To address this high prevalence of depression, the authors recommended that clinicians use these risk factors and ongoing systematic screening to identify those at risk for depression.

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