Vol 15, Issue 5, 2022 Online - 2455-3891 Print - 0974-2441 PREVALENCE OF PSYCHIATRIC COMORBIDITIES IN PATIENTS WITH DEPRESSION MEGHNA GUPTA, PARUL SHARMA, RAVI CHAND SHARMA, SAURABH YAKHMI* Department of Psychiatry, MM Medical College and Hospital, Solan, Himachal Pradesh, India. Email: saurabhyakhmi@gmail.com Received: 17 February 2022, Revised and Accepted: 23 March 2022 ABSTRACT Objective: The aim of the study was to study the prevalence of psychiatric comorbidities in patients of depression. Methods: The present cross-sectional study was conducted among 60 patients of depression. All the patients were evaluated for sociodemographic profile and Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview was administered to evaluate, identify, and diagnose the most common psychiatric comorbidities as per its modules. Results: Results showed that 65.0% of patients had psychiatric comorbidities and 35.0% had no psychiatric comorbidity. About 53.3% patients had psychiatric comorbidity of generalized anxiety disorder, 23.3% patients had psychiatric comorbidity of suicidality, 11.7% had panic disorders, 6.7% had alcohol use disorders, and 5.0% had substance use disorders (SUDs) (non-alcoholic). No statistically significant association was found in prevalence of different psychiatric comorbidities among sociodemographic characteristics of age, gender, region, religion, family type, educational status, and occupational groups. However, statistically significant association was seen among alcohol use disorders in different gender groups and occupational groups. Conclusion: Our study showed the highest prevalence of psychiatric comorbidity of generalized anxiety disorder and then suicidality, panic disorders, alcohol use disorders, and least prevalence of SUDs. No statistically significant association was found between sociodemographic characteristics and psychiatric comorbidities except association of alcohol use disorders with gender and occupational groups. There is a paucity of research exploring relationship of specific psychiatric comorbidities in depressive patients in India. Data of our study will contribute to enrich the Indian specific data on psychiatric comorbidities in depression and help formulate appropriate management strategies. Keywords: Depression, Generalized anxiety disorders, Suicidality, Panic disorders, Alcohol use disorders. INTRODUCTION Depression is a chronic and often relapsing or recurrent disease with long course and is being considered as a clinically significant public health problem because of its ever increasing prevalence and associated significant morbidity, dysfunction, and mortality. It leads to enormous economic burden especially in post-COVID-19 era in developing nations like India. Depending on the severity of symptoms and number of episodes, depression can be classified into mild, moderate, and severe depression [1]. Global burden of depression in 2015 was estimated to be more than 300 million people which equals to about 4.3% of the world’s population. Depression is ranked as the single largest contributor to global disability (7.5% of all years lived with disability in 2015) [1]. Prevalence of depression in India has varied from 1.7 to 74 per thousand population in different studies and community samples [2,3]. The National Mental Health Survey 2015-16 also showed that depression affected one in 20 Indians and about 15% adults in India required active intervention for mental health problems [4]. Feinstein in 1970 first introduced the term comorbidity to explain the presence of a distinct additional clinical entity along with the index disease [5]. During past decade, the term comorbidity has become increasingly common representing an important aspect of clinical psychiatry. Psychiatric comorbidity may be defined as simultaneous presence of more than one psychiatric disorder in a person during a certain time period in any combinations [6]. A study showed that the clinical outcome of patients with depression can be influenced by several factors and presence of comorbidities and severity of depression can influence the depressive episodes duration and recurrences [7]. Evidence suggests that psychiatric comorbidities may be associated with increased economic and public health-care delivery system burden because of comorbidities, whether medical or psychiatric, and it leads to poorer outcomes such as increased risk rehospitalization or relapse, violence, adverse life events, family discord, suicide or increased medical comorbidity, or homelessness [8,9]. Evaluation and diagnosis of comorbid disorder are of paramount importance to modify treatment schedules and improve patient outcomes for both the index mental illness and comorbid diagnosis and more importantly diagnosis of comorbid disorder should be an expectation and not an exception [10]. There is a paucity of research on depression and psychiatric comorbidity in India. However, knowledge about comorbidities is important in clinical practice, health-care policies and planning, new research hypotheses, and management of index disease as well as comorbid conditions. Hence, we initiated this research study to explore prevalence of psychiatric comorbidities in depression. Aim and objectives The aim of the study was to study the prevalence of psychiatric comorbidities in patients of depression. METHODS This cross-sectional observational study was conducted among patients suffering from depression fulfilling the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Edition (ICD 10) diagnostic criterion, who were evaluated according to the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale (HDRS) [11] and patients with >17 score were included in the study. Sixty patients evaluated fulfilled the criteria and were enrolled after obtaining written informed consent as per study protocol approved by the Institutional Ethical Committee. Inclusion criteria Patients of depression, age >18 years with HAM-D score of >17 who gave written informed consent, were included in the study. © 2022 The Authors. Published by Innovare Academic Sciences Pvt Ltd. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/ licenses/by/4.0/) DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.22159/ajpcr.2022v15i5.44467. Journal homepage: https://innovareacademics.in/journals/index.php/ajpcr Research Article