Assessment of psychiatric co-morbidities in patient of bronchial asthma attending a tertiary medical centre (Multicentric study)

Devendra Kumar Singh; Ankit Mehrotra; Sanjeev Anand; Gajendra Vikram Singh; Ashutosh Kumar Gupta; Santosh Kumar

doi:10.4103/jfmpc.jfmpc_1331_20

Assessment of psychiatric co-morbidities in patient of bronchial asthma attending a tertiary medical centre (Multicentric study)

J Family Med Prim Care. 2020 Nov 30;9(11):5741-5744. doi: 10.4103/jfmpc.jfmpc_1331_20. eCollection 2020 Nov.

Authors

Devendra Kumar Singh¹, Ankit Mehrotra², Sanjeev Anand³, Gajendra Vikram Singh⁴, Ashutosh Kumar Gupta⁵, Santosh Kumar⁶

Affiliations

¹ Associate Professor, Department of Respiratory Medicine, School of Medical Sciences and Research, Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh, India.
² Assistant Professor, Department of Tuberculosis and Respiratory Medicine, Varun Arjun Medical College, Shahjahanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India.
³ Associate Professor, Department of Tuberculosis and Respiratory Medicine, Fh Medical College, Tundla Firozabad, Uttar Pradesh, India.
⁴ Associate Professor, Department of Tuberculosis and Respiratory Medicine, S.N. Medical College, Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India.
⁵ Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry, S.N. Medical College, Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India.
⁶ Head, Department of Tuberculosis & Chest Diseases, S.N. Medical College, Agra, Uttar Pradesh, India.

Abstract

Aims and objectives: Asthma is a chronic inflammatory condition, which is associated with increase in airway hyper responsiveness that leads to recurrent episodes of wheezing, breathlessness, chest tightness and coughing. Asthma is a very common respiratory illness, in which some of the disease related factors may increases the vulnerability to psychiatric disorders. This study was done to determine the prevalence of psychiatric co-morbidity in patients of bronchial asthma.

Methodology: It is an observational study conducted in 110 follow-up patients of bronchial asthma attending respiratory medicine OPD at tertiary care centre in central India. Psychiatric co-morbidities are assessed by pre-designed short-structured questionnaire using Mini international neuropsychiatric interview.

Result: Among 110 patients of bronchial asthma 28% had psychiatric co-morbidity mainly depressive episode (59%). A significant association is found between lower socioeconomic status (P = 0.01), duration of of active illness (more than 1 year) (P = 0.001), and age of patient above 60 years (P = 0.001) with psychiatric co-morbidity of asthma patient.

Conclusion: Our study shows there is increased prevalence of psychiatric co-morbidities in patients of bronchial asthma, higher than the national average. The predominant psychiatric disorder seen is depressive disorder, so treatment of asthma should be a multidisciplinary approach including medical treatment of asthma and psychiatric evaluation to prevent psychiatric co-morbidity or its early management. This will greatly reduce the morbidity, visits to hospital, expenditure on treatment and thereby having better outcomes in our patients of asthma.

Keywords: Bronchial Asthma; Copd; Psychiatric Co Morbidity.