Mental disorders in leprosy: An underdiagnosed and untreated population.

OBJECTIVE: To describe the frequency of psychiatric comorbidities in leprosy patients and check if they had been previously diagnosed and were in psychiatric care. METHOD: The study was conducted with a sample of 120 leprosy patients being treated at two reference hospitals for leprosy in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. Survey participants were more than 18years of age, had a confirmed diagnosis of leprosy and was undergoing antimicrobial treatment. Patients were evaluated face-to-face with a socio-demographic questionnaire and the Mini-International Neuropsychiatric Interview (MINI-Plus) in Portuguese. The period of data collection was between October 2009 and June 2012. RESULTS: The assessment using the MINI-Plus showed that 34 (28.3%) patients did not receive any psychiatric diagnosis and 86 (71.7%) met the criteria for at least one. Of these 86 patients, 25 (20.8%) had one diagnosis, 26 (21.7%) had two diagnoses and the rest, 35 (29.2%), had three or more psychiatric diagnoses. All patients with a moderate or high risk of suicide had one or more psychiatric comorbidities. CONCLUSION: Leprosy patients have a high prevalence of psychiatric comorbidities. Furthermore, most of them had no previous psychiatric diagnosis and the majority was not undergoing treatment.