Dataset Information

Psychiatric symptoms in a Spanish sample with hereditary cancer risk.

ABSTRACT:

Objective

An integral part of the genetic counselling process is the assessment of psychiatric morbidity. The objectives of this study were first to assess psychometric properties of the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ-28items) in a Spanish sample at increased risk of hereditary cancer, and second evaluated the prevalence of psychiatric morbidity and the contribution of socio-demographic and clinical characteristics to predict distress.

Methods

A cross-sectional study was designed with 766 patients. Psychometric analysis with exploratory factor analysis was performed. The influences of socio-demographic characteristics were investigated by multiple linear regression analyses.

Results

Factor analysis supported the four-factor solution of the original GHQ-28; Depression and Social dysfunction scales were more stable than Anxiety and Somatic symptom scales. Psychiatric morbidity was detected in 212 (27.9%) patients. The variables predicting psychiatric morbidity were gender, age, patient affected by cancer, previous psychiatric treatment, and patients with relatives affected by cancer. The higher prevalence of psychiatric symptoms was in the age group from 41 to 59 years (16.73%), women (24.37%), patients affected by cancer (19.89%), patients without previous psychiatric treatment (20.82%), and patients with relatives affected by cancer (21.74%).

Conclusion

Screening psychological distress should consider socio-demographic and clinical characteristics with reference to improve the quality of care.

Trial registration

Clinical trials identifier: NCT04428710.

SUBMITTER: Costa-Requena G

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9270520 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:BackgroundA diagnosis of dementia in middle-aged and elder people is often complicated by physical frailty and comorbid neuropsychiatric symptoms (NPSs). Previous studies have identified NPSs as a risk factor for dementia. The aim of this study was to figure out to what extent individual NPS and certain demographic factors increased the risk of dementia in middle-aged and senior psychiatric inpatients.MethodsOne hundred twenty-seven middle-aged and senior patients admitted to psychiatric wards for late-onset (age ≥ 50 years) psychiatric symptoms were included and categorized into dementia or non-demented psychiatric disorders (NDPD). The patients' demographic information and medical records were collected during the first hospitalization and subjected to statistical analyses.Results41.73% of the registered psychiatric inpatients were diagnosed as dementia in which Alzheimer's disease (AD) was the dominant subtype. The NDPD group consisted of nine individual diagnoses, except for schizophrenia. The frequencies of dementia inpatients increased with first episode age while that of NDPD inpatients decreased with first episode age. In the enrolled inpatients, most of dementia patients were males while females accounted for a higher proportion of NDPD patients. 58.49% of enrolled dementia inpatients presented cognitive deficit (CD) as the initial symptom while the remaining 41.51% showed NPS as initial symptom. Of the 12 NPSs, agitation and apathy greatly and significantly increased risk of dementia in psychiatric inpatients with late-onset psychiatric symptoms.ConclusionsThese results added evidence that the demented patients admitted to psychiatric ward are more likely to be male, older first episode age, and have characteristic NPS including aberrant motor behavior (AMB), hallucinations, agitation, irritability and apathy. Further, this study emphasized the importance of agitation and apathy of NPSs functioning as risk factors of dementia in these inpatients.