Assessment of depression and suicidal risk in patients with psoriasis: A hospital-based cross sectional study

Background: Psoriasis is one of the common psychosomatic illnesses which have impairment of physical, psychological, social functioning of an individual. This impairment may lead to psychiatric morbidities such as anxiety disorders and depressive disorder which increase the suicidal risk in these patients. The present hospital-based comparative study was carried out to evaluate the depression and suicidal risk in patients with psoriasis and to compare them with healthy control. Methods: This was a hospital-based cross-sectional study. Fifty patients with psoriasis were enrolled for the study after their informed consent with purposive sampling method from the department of dermatology in a tertiary care hospital in the northeastern part of India and compared them with those of the control group. The severity of psoriasis was assessed using the Psoriasis Area and Severity Index scale. The same patients were evaluated by the International Classification of Mental and Behavioral Disorders tenth revision research criteria along with the Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression and suicidal risk assessment form to diagnose and grade depression and assess for suicidal risk. Data were analyzed in SPSS version 16.0. Results: The incidence of depression was significantly higher in the psoriasis patient group (44%) in comparison to the control group. Among them, 50% of the depressed patients had mild depression and 31.9% of the patients had very severe depression with death wish with suicidal ideation. Furthermore, 4.6% of the depressed patients have a high risk of suicide. Conclusions: These findings indicate the need of early recognition of depression and suicidal risk among these patients and their early intervention will improve the primary disease process and will prevent a devastating outcome like suicide.