Psychiatric disorders in patients with essential tremor.
BACKGROUND
Previous studies have reported that a consistent proportion of patients with Essential Tremor may have psychiatric disorders but it is unclear whether these disorders are increased in frequency as compared to healthy subjects.


METHODS
In a case-control study, we adopted the structured interviews for DSM-IV, SCID-I and SCID-II, to investigate psychiatric and personality disorders in 37 ET patients and 34 healthy subjects. As cognitive changes in ET may be a confounding factor we enrolled patients and healthy control subjects without cognitive dysfunction.


RESULTS
SCID-I showed that Axis-I psychiatric disorders, mainly depressive disorders, were more frequent in ET patients (20 of 37; 54%) than in healthy subjects (8 of 34; 22%) (p < 0.01). Depressive disorders were more frequent in patients with a family history of ET (p < 0.05) in comparison to patients without a family history. SCID-II disclosed that the frequency of personality disorders was similar in patients with ET and healthy subjects.


CONCLUSIONS
Psychiatric disorders may be associated to the neurological manifestations of ET.
Department of Neurology and Psychiatry, Sapienza University of Rome, Rome, Italy.
Giovanni
G
Fabbrini
Isabella
I
Berardelli
Marika
M
Falla
Germana
G
Moretti
Massimo
M
Pasquini
Marta
M
Altieri
Giovanni
G
Defazio
Massimo
M
Biondi
Alfredo
A
Berardelli
D000368:Aged; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D003866:Depressive Disorder / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000523:psychology; D039721:Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders; D020329:Essential Tremor / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000523:psychology*; D008875:Middle Aged; D010554:Personality Disorders / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000523:psychology; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales