Asthma, Anxiety and Depression are they walking together? Cross- Sectional Descriptive Study

Xavier Flor-Escriche*, Roser Poblet- Cortés, Laia Lamarca-Fornell, Judit Mendez-Gomez, Sílvia Álvarez- Álvarez, Sara-Anna Davies-Daunas and MVictoria Feijoo-Rodriguez

Background/Objectives: The association between asthma and mental health disorders is well known, both anxiety and depression being the most common ones. The aim is to determine the proportion of anxiety and/or depression in an asthmatic population compared to a non-asthmaticone in a Primary Care centre. Secondary objectives: Assess the association between the severity of asthma and its level of control and anxiety and/or depression.

Methods: Cross-sectional descriptive study, 317 patients diagnosed of asthma and 306 without asthma, aged between 17 to 70 years old, recruited from a primary care centre. Goldberg test was performed to detect anxiety and/or depression. Other variables analysed were: age, sex, previous diagnosis of anxiety and/or depression, associated chronic diseases, type of asthma and degree of its control.

Results: 70% of the people in the asthmatic group were women and 52% in the non-asthmatic group. The mean age was of 43 (SD 16.89) and 48 (SD 14.09) years old, respectively 57.1% had intermittent asthma. 62.7% of asthmatics had good control. Goldberg test in the group of asthmatic patients showed 51.1% (p = 0.0001) of anxiety and 57.4% (p = 0.0001) of depression. The results were adjusted for age and sex maintaining the association between asthma and anxiety with an OR = 1.8 (95% CI: 1.3-2.6) and depression OR = 2.1 (95% CI: 1.5 to 3.0). Patients with a higher level of asthma control had less anxiety (p = 0.002) and depression (p = 0.004).

Conclusions: Asthmatic patients had more anxiety and depression. Higher asthma control was associated with less anxiety and depression.

Keywords: Asthma; Anxiety; Depression; Transversal; Descriptive; Mental health

Published on: Mar 18, 2016 Pages: 10-15

Full Text PDF Full Text HTML DOI: 10.17352/aprc.000009
CrossMark Publons Harvard Library HOLLIS Search IT Semantic Scholar Get Citation Base Search Scilit OAI-PMH ResearchGate Academic Microsoft GrowKudos Universite de Paris UW Libraries SJSU King Library SJSU King Library NUS Library McGill DET KGL BIBLiOTEK JCU Discovery Universidad De Lima WorldCat VU on WorldCat