title: Psoriasis and psychiatric morbidity: a profile from a tertiary care centre of eastern India.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Psoriasis has an impact on psychology of the patients. There is a dearth of studies regarding this field in eastern India.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  The primary objective of this study is to evaluate the psychiatric morbidity in psoriasis and secondary objective is to assess the morbidity in all eight dimensions of psychosocial and physical aspects, i.e. cognitive, social, discomfort, limitations, depression, fear, embarrassment and anger.
  
  
  METHODS
  Institutional based case control study.
  
  
  METHODS
  Forty-eight patients of psoriasis and equal number of healthy controls were included in the study. Self-reporting questionnaire-24 (SRQ-24) and skindex (A 61-item survey questionnaire) were used to assess the psychiatric morbidity in both groups.
  
  
  METHODS
  "MedCalc version 10.2.0.0" (by Acacialaan 22, B-8400, Ostend, Belgium) was used as statistical software. Chi-square test was used as a test of significance.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The SRQ assessed psychiatric morbidity in the study group was 62.5%, compared with 18.5% in the control group. This difference was statistically significant (P < 0.001). Guttate psoriasis had maximum association with psychiatric morbidity (100%), followed by plaque type (63.6%) and palmoplantar type (42.8%). According to the skindex, the most common psychiatric morbidity in psoriasis patients was anger (58.3%), followed by discomfort (52.08%), social problem (52.08%), cognitive impairment (50%), embarrassment (50%), physical limitation (47.91%), fear (47.91%) and depression (43.75%). The skindex observed psychiatric morbidity among the case and control group was statistically significant for all the parameters (P < 0.0001).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Psoriasis has a high degree of psychiatric morbidity and the extent of this co-morbidity is even greater than hitherto thought of.
authors.affiliation: School of Tropical Medicine, Kolkata, India.
authors.forename: Somenath
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Sarkar
authors.affiliation: The Institute of Post-Graduate Medical Education and Research, Kolkata, India.
authors.forename: Arnab
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Sarkar
authors.affiliation: School of Tropical Medicine, Kolkata, India.
authors.forename: Revanta
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Saha
authors.affiliation: Burdwan Medical College, West Bengal, India.
authors.forename: Tanusree
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Sarkar
keywords: Psoriasis; psychiatric morbidity; self-reporting questionnaire-24; skindex