ANXIETY AND DEPRESSION ARE NOT ASSOCIATED WITH CLINICAL MANIFESTATIONS IN NON-SERIOUS SLE

Background: SLE is usually associated with psychological stresses, which are relevant to patient's quality of life. These aspects of the patient's perception of the disease are often neglected for the medical staff.Objectives: To assess if the clinical manifestations of the disease correlate with psychological status in patients with SLE.Methods: We included 30 patients with non-serious SLE (no previous involvement of major organ or system), all women, with a mean age of 38,4 years (20-60), with a mean evolution time of 104 months (23-312). Clinical manifestations of the disease were collected from the clinical records of the patients. A psychologist interviewed the patients and applied the Beck depression inventory (BDI) to access the state-depression, Zung scale to access the state-anxiety and Symptom distress checklist (SCL-90 R) to access the global index of 9 symptomatic dimensions.Results: Cutaneous involvement was present in 53.3%, joint involvement in 90.0% and haematological involvement in 23.3%. Psychological showed that 41.4% were depressed (6.9% requiring psychiatric assistance), 44.8% presented high levels of anxiety and 34.5% presented depression and anxiety simultaneously. Anxiety and depression do not correlated with age at the beginning of the disease (r=0,22; p=n.s.); disease duration (r=0,18; p=n.s.); SLEDAI index (r=0,09; p=n.s.) or with the patterns of clinical involvement. Non-medical information and popular believes about the future health status, were identified as very important for the psychological status of the patients.Conclusion: In this population of lupus patients, psychological status does not correlate with the clinical manifestations (at presentation or during the evolution of the disease), age or disease duration. Aspects that may be important to the anxiety and depression status of these patients include non-medical information and popular believes about the diseaseCitation: , volume , supplement , year 2002, page Session: SLE – Clinical aspects 1