If you survey the caregivers and patients, most caregivers respond that they have insufficient resources, meaning financial as well as personal resources. And, not surprisingly, half of the caregivers develop an emotional illness at 1 year after their family member's stroke, primarily depression, but also anxiety and other problems. Caregivers are most often female, either a spouse or a daughter of the victim. And most of these people are forced to give up something, either a job outside the home or time with their own family. This burden and the cost of this burden are enormous and are not yet quantified.
Stroke can result from several different diseases.
A hemorrhagic stroke can be a hematoma, a disease that occurs in the same age group and is associated with the same risk factors as infarction. And most of the survivors are left gravely disabled. Subarachnoid hemorrhage is a disease of young and middle-aged adults. These patients, since they are only 30 or 40 years old at the time of the stroke, require the same services as older stroke patients but for a much longer period of time. Serious complications of subarachnoid hemorrhage include vasospasm, which can be treated.