'It was a living nightmare': Calgarian urges more mental health support for women post-stroke

Becky Morrison was 36 when her life changed in an instant.

"I just sat up and went, 'something's wrong.' All of the sudden it was like I was hearing under water," she recalled.

Those were the first signs Morrison was having a stroke in 2016. Her condition deteriorated and the ultimate diagnosis was shocking.

"I had to re-learn how to read, write, talk, pretty much everything."

Morrison struggled with a number of other debilitating symptoms including tinnitus, nausea and imbalance, some of which remain, and it was a year before she was able to return to her job as a Calgary-based nurse practitioner.

"You're in this dark, dark place, where you don't know if you're going to get better," she said.

Beyond the physical impacts, Morrison experienced what she describes as "crippling" depression.

"It was a living nightmare and it was the only time in my life I thought about taking my life."

As she struggled to recover, Morrison was offered all kinds of physical rehabilitation but said her mental health was overlooked.

"No one reached out to me about my mental health. I reached out to them first," she said.

"It wasn't a part of the rehabilitation and that was shocking to me...T hese are the worst days of your life and we don't talk about the mental health?"

Depression is common among people who experience stroke. 

And, according to the Heart and Stroke Foundation's latest report, women are 20 to 70 per cent more likely to experience it than are men. 

While there have been dramatic strides in stroke care, the report notes mental health supports have not kept pace.

"It's similar across the country where that expertise isn't built in routinely to the stroke recovery processes," said Patrice Lindsay, director of health systems with the Heart and Stroke Foundation.

According to Lindsay, the organization is strengthening its clinical guidelines to reflect the differences in how stroke affects  women and men.

"Mental health issues after stroke are very significant for everyone, especially for women," she said.

"We have to be clear that this has to be a routine part of assessments and followup for everybody that's had a stroke — especially women — because the research is clear that women are more affected."

Nearly 1 million Canadians impacted

More than 920,000 Canadians are living with the effects of stroke, including anxiety and depression, according to the report.

"When you have a sudden, new disability which you never had before ... that's a major adjustment, a major loss," said Calgary stroke neurologist, Dr. Michael Hill.

"It is a big problem. We see a lot of this."

According to Hill, there are likely a number reasons for the higher rates of depression among female stroke patients, including social factors.

Because women tend to live longer than men, he sees a lot of older women suffering from stroke, who are widowed. 

"They don't have support at home. And then if you're alone you become more anxious and those things can lead to symptoms of depression," he said.

"Maybe a single mother has a stroke [and] now no longer has the capacity to take care of her kids."

The report notes gender roles, socio-economic status and higher rates of mood disorders among women generally, contribute to the phenomenon.

"By raising awareness we raise the ability to do more research in the area, to understand it more, to sort out how to treat it better and then to get more resources to provide the services for those people," said Hill.

According to the report, women are at higher risk of stroke during pregnancy, right after menopause and when they are elderly.