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3 The number of patients surviving with stroke-related disabilities have been increasing in recent years as the population ages and as medical technology around acute stroke care advances. 1, 2 Korea's latest data show that stroke deaths account for 7.7% of all deaths and are the fourth leading cause of death in the country. Stroke is an important public health issue in the world as it is the second leading cause of death and the third most common cause of disability globally. Community-based strategies and family support programs, especially for female family members of stroke survivors, are essential to improve the psychological health of stroke families. This study shows that FwSS have poorer psychological health outcomes than GwoSF with similar sociodemographic characteristics. Moreover, the psychological health problems of FwSS were more evident in females than in males. The aORs for usual stress (aOR 1.32, 95% CI 1.21–1.42), depressive mood (aOR 1.14, 95% CI 0.99–1.31 borderline significance), and suicidal ideation (aOR 1.17, 95% CI 1.05–1.30) were significantly higher among FwSS than GwoSF. Compared to GwoSF, the adjusted odds ratios (aORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for psychological health problems in FwSS were calculated using multiple logistic regression analysis. After propensity score-matching, the proportion of usual stress (30.2% vs 24.6%), depressive mood (7.1% vs 6.1%), and suicidal ideation (13.0% vs 11.1%) in FwSS were all significantly higher than those in GwoSF ( Ps<0.05). Each FwSS was matched to 3 controls of GwoSF (13,542 controls) using a greedy matching algorithm with 8 to 1 digit matching. In order to determine control groups in GwoSF, propensity scores were generated based on the sociodemographic characteristics of age, gender, residential region, marital status, educational level, monthly household income, and employment status. A total of 4,514 cases of FwSS were selected for analysis from the 2013 Korea Community Health Survey.
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This study aimed to identify and assess the differences in psychological health problems between families living with stroke survivors (FwSS) and the general population without stroke families (GwoSF).