Sagar Karia, Avinash De Sousa, Nilesh Shah, Sushma Sonavane and Anup Bharati
Background: Vitiligo is associated with various psychiatric comorbidities. Various studies have showed prevalence ranging from 34% to 75%. Vitiligo can greatly affect the quality of life of patients and psychiatric comorbidities can further worsen it. Thus there is need to recognise psychiatric comorbidities and treat them in these patients.
Aims: The aims of our study were to determine the psychiatric morbidity and the Quality of Life (QOL) in patients suffering from vitiligo and to determine the factors related with psychiatric morbidity and those affecting the QOL in these patients.
Methods: 50 patients of age range 18 – 65 years with disease duration of 1-26 years attending the vitiligo clinic in dermatology outpatient department of a tertiary care hospital were included and 50 persons with no dermatological or diagnosed psychiatric illness accompanying them served as control group. They were diagnosed for psychiatric disorders as per DSM-IV TR, if present. Scales used were Body Surface Area (BSA), WHO-Quality of Life (WHO-QOL) scale, General Health Questionnaire (GHQ), Hamilton rating scales for Anxiety and Depression (HAM-A and HAM-D).
Results: 30% patients in vitiligo group suffered from psychiatric disorder, depression was present in 20% of patients and 8% had anxiety disorders. QOL scores had negative correlation with BSA, GHQ, HAM-A and HAM-D scores and they were statistically significant.
Conclusions: Thus it was found that vitiligo patients had more psychiatric comorbidities as compared to control group and it had bearing on their quality of life too.
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Journal of Dermatology and Dermatologic Diseases received 4 citations as per Google Scholar report
