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Differentiating anxiety and depression symptoms in patients with partial epilepsy.

Cramer JA, Brandenburg N, Xu X

Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, New Haven, CT 06516-2770, USA. joyce.cramer@yale.edu

Anxiety and depression are separate psychiatric conditions that are often interrelated. This study examines whether they exist independently in this population of patients with partial epilepsy and if they affect all quality-of-life domains. Adult epilepsy patients taking two or more antiepileptic drugs completed a health status survey including demographic items, the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, and the Quality of Life in Epilepsy-10 (QOLIE-10). The questionnaire was completed by 201 epilepsy patients. Symptom prevalences of anxiety (52% none, 25% mild, 16% moderate, 7% severe) and depression (62% none, 20% mild, 14% moderate, 4% severe) were high. All health-related quality-of-life (HRQOL) domains worsened significantly with increasing levels of anxiety and depression: Total QOLIE-10 scores decreased from 72+/-18 in patients with no anxiety to 54+/-13 in those with mild, 48+/-18 in those with moderate, and 40+/-23 in those with severe anxiety (P<0.0001). Total QOLIE-10 scores decreased from 70+/-16 in patients with no depression to 50+/-16 in those with mild, 45+/-16 in those with moderate, and 24+/-21 in those with severe depression (P<0.0001). No significant difference in anxiety scores was observed controlling for seizure frequency or epilepsy duration. Regression analyses showed that anxiety and depression account for different proportions of variance as predictors of HRQOL (R2=0.337 (anxiety) and 0.511 (depression)). The data suggest that patients may benefit from increased attention to the role of anxiety separately from depression.

Published 23 May 2005 in Epilepsy Behav, 6(4): 563-9.
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