@article{24807,
  keywords = {Mental Disorders, leprosy, Hansen's disease, Comorbidity},
  author = {Rocha-Leite CI and Borges-Oliveira R and Araújo-de-Freitas L and Machado P and Quarantini LC},
  title = {Mental disorders in leprosy: An underdiagnosed and untreated population.},
  abstract = {OBJECTIVE: To describe the frequency of psychiatric comorbidities in leprosy patients and check if they had been previously diagnosed and were in psychiatric care.

METHOD: The study was conducted with a sample of 120 leprosy patients being treated at two reference hospitals for leprosy in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. Survey participants were more than 18years of age, had a confirmed diagnosis of leprosy and was undergoing antimicrobial treatment. Patients were evaluated face-to-face with a socio-demographic questionnaire and the Mini-International Neuropsychiatric Interview (MINI-Plus) in Portuguese. The period of data collection was between October 2009 and June 2012.

RESULTS: The assessment using the MINI-Plus showed that 34 (28.3%) patients did not receive any psychiatric diagnosis and 86 (71.7%) met the criteria for at least one. Of these 86 patients, 25 (20.8%) had one diagnosis, 26 (21.7%) had two diagnoses and the rest, 35 (29.2%), had three or more psychiatric diagnoses. All patients with a moderate or high risk of suicide had one or more psychiatric comorbidities.

CONCLUSION: Leprosy patients have a high prevalence of psychiatric comorbidities. Furthermore, most of them had no previous psychiatric diagnosis and the majority was not undergoing treatment.},
  year = {2014},
  journal = {Journal of psychosomatic research},
  volume = {76},
  pages = {422-5},
  month = {2014 May},
  issn = {1879-1360},
  doi = {10.1016/j.jpsychores.2014.02.006},
  language = {eng},
}