Prevalence of psychiatric disorders in multiple sclerosis patients: A cross-sectional study

The incidence risk of psychiatric disorders is higher in patients with multiple sclerosis (MS) than in the general population. This cross-sectional study aimed to evaluate the frequency of psychiatric disorders in patients with MS referring to Sina Hospital in Hamadan, western Iran, from 2016 to 2019.

This cross-sectional study was performed on 95 patients with MS referring to Sina Hospital in Hamadan, 2016-2019. Demographic information, illness duration, and psychiatric disorders were collected using the Symptom Checklist-90-Revised (SCL-90-R) questionnaire in 2016-2017. Data were analyzed in SPSS software (version 16) using the Chi-square test and Spearman correlation coefficient.

The most common psychiatric disorders in these patients were found to be depression in 36 (39.1%) cases, phobic anxiety in 33 (34.7%) subjects, and somatization in 33 (34.7%) patients. The least prevalence rates of the disorders were reported for psychoticism in 17 (17.9%) cases and paranoid ideations in 18 (18.9%) cases. In all psychiatric disorders, except obsessive-compulsive disorder, the frequency of psychiatric disorders was higher in women than in men (27.1% vs. 13.8%), and the only significant difference between the two groups was observed in the anxiety dimension (P=0.002). There was a significant positive correlation between the mean scores of the global severity index and the Expanded Disability Status Scale (r=0.41, P =0.001).

The findings of this study showed that in patients with MS, depression, somatization, and phobic anxiety were the most common psychiatric disorders that were associated with increased severity of the disability.