Psychiatric Co-Morbidity in Persons with Hansen’s Disease

ABSTRACT: OBJECTIVE: To estimate prevalence of psychiatric co-morbidity and its effect on quality of life in persons with Hansen’s disease. METHOD: The study was conducted on around 80 persons above 18 year age with Hansen’s disease in out-patient department dermatology and in leprosy home. Participants were diagnosed cases of Hansen’s disease, selected randomly and were evaluated with socio demographic questionnaire, Duke’s general health questionnaire, DSM-5 self rated level 1 cross cutting symptom measure – adult and WHO-QOL-BREF. The period of data collection was from October 2014 to March 2015. RESULTS: The assessment showed that prevalence of at least one psychiatric co morbidity was 83.75% (67/80 patients) and of these 67 patients 18(26.86%) have one diagnosis, 26(38.80%) have two diagnoses and 23(34.32%) have 3 or more psychiatric diagnoses. Among all depression was most prevalent (28.35%) mental disorder; followed by anxiety disorder (23.88%). Quality of life was significantly impaired in almost all persons with Hansen’s disease. CONCLUSION: Persons with Hansen’s disease have significantly high prevalence of mental disorders which have much impact on their quality of life which were under diagnosed and thus remained untreated.