In the second edition of The Clinical Neuropsychiatry of Stroke, I have tried to include all of the recent findings concerning the neuropsychiatric syndromes associated with stroke published since 1998 when the original edition of this text was released. Integrating the substantial amount of literature which has been generated over the past 7 years has been a large task. The number of publications related to the single topic of poststroke depression has more than doubled in the 7 years before the first edition of this text (i.e., from 1990 to 1997), compared with the 7 years since the first edition (i.e., 1998 to 2004) (source: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/). This reflects the growing worldwide interest in poststroke depression as well as the numerous other stroke related neuropsychiatric disorders and the growing recognition by clinicians that neuropsychiatric syndromes are both common and have a negative influence on patients' emotional state, physical recovery, cognitive recovery, and even survival following stroke. Thus, identifying effective interventions based on controlled treatment trials represents an essential task in the care of patients with stroke. The recent demonstration by Rasmussen et al. (2003) (see Chapter 23) that the negative physical consequences of poststroke depression may be significantly reduced by prophylactic treatment with antidepressants represents a major advance in the care of patients with stroke.