Affiliation:
1. Assistant Professor Psychiatry
2. Professor and HOD, Psychiatry
Abstract
Background: Skin has a special place in psychiatry with its responsiveness to emotional stimuli and ability to express emotions such as anger, fear,
shame and frustration.
Aim and objectives: 1. To study the distribution of psychiatric morbidities according to the duration of dermatological disorders.
2. To study the correlation between the duration of dermatological disorders with type of psychiatric morbidity.
Results: Patients having dermatological disorder for up to 1 month were not diagnosed of having any psychiatric morbidity. Maximum psychiatric
morbidity was when the duration of illness was for more than 1 year. Out of 33 patients suffering from dermatological disorders for more than one
year 22 (66.66%) patients had psychiatric illness with a statistically signicant Pvalue of 0.0011. This was followed by patients having illness for 6
months to 1 year. 4 patients (26.66%) were diagnosed as having psychiatric morbidity. p value was signicant and was 0.0043.The patients having
illness from 1 to 6 months did not have any signicant amount of psychiatric morbidity. Depression has strong positive correlation with all the
duration intervals that are more than 1 month. Maximum correlation is with the durations more than 1 year. Dysthymia has positive correlation
only with cases having duration more than 1 year of age. Factor C, suicidality also has signicant positive correlation with the illness having a
duration of more than 1 year.
Conclusion: The present study suggests that chronicity and long standing dermatological disorder has an impact on mental health of the patient.
High chances of disgurement and long duration of treatment may also contribute to the increase in the chances of mental illness.
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