Depression and anxiety in patients with epilepsy

Abstract

Introduction. Depressive, anxious and other mood disorders are factors that, along with epileptic seizures, complicate the course of epilepsy and prevent full recovery of patient health even when remission is achieved seizures and significantly impair social adaptation of patients suffering from epilepsy. That's why study and early diagnosis of these disorders will allow us to choose the right therapeutic tactics of prevention and treatment, will facilitate psychosocial rehabilitation of such patients and, as a result, will help patients there in optimizing their quality of life - study, employment, family, etc. Aim of study. Mood disorders associated with epilepsy are very common and overrepresented compared with other chronic medical conditions. Depression is a particularly common and worrisome comorbidity, especially because suicidality seems to be increased significantly in the context of epilepsy. Depression and epilepsy may exacerbate each other. Methods and materials. In this research 54 patients were included. All patients were investigated at the department of epileptology within the Institute of Emergency Medicine from Chișinău. All the patients were hospitalized due to the worsening of their illness . The tools of analysis used were clinical data of the patients and results from general questionnaires and special for depression screening PHQ-9 and TAG 9 questionnaires. Patients were divided into groups depending on the severity of the depression/anxiety level. Results. In our study, depressive disorder was detected in 66% of those examined, and 55,6% of them were female. The most patients 41,5% detected with mild depression severity, 34% healthy patients, without depressive disorders, 24,5% moderate depression, 5,5% moderately severe depression. Anxiety was present almost constantly in 73.9% of cases. 57,4 detected with moderate anxiety and 16,5 detected with severe anxiety. The most common plot was the fear of a recurrence of a seizure - 73.8% of patients, and in 41.6% of cases - in female patients. Conclusion. Mood disorders, and particularly depression, are commonly associated with epilepsy. Principles of modern epilepsy therapy consist not only in achieving remission of epileptic seizures, but also helping the patient to optimize his quality life. identification of presence of depression will, by itself, go a long way toward improvement of quality of life for persons with epilepsy and comorbid mood disorder. Ultimately, treatment of comorbid mood disorder has important implications for outcome and quality of life, perhaps even more than treatment of epilepsy itself.