Prevalence of psychiatric ailments among patients with sexually transmitted disease

A cross-sectional descriptive study conducted on 250 sexually transmitted disease patients was carried out in two teaching institutes and their tertiary hospitals. These subjects constitute a special group of population for psychiatric diagnosis by using Structured Clinical Interview for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual IIIR. The study was done in the dermatology and venereology outpatient department of two tertiary hospitals of Dhaka, between January 1998 and January 1999. The findings show that 34% of total sexually transmitted disease patients had psychiatric disorders. Anxiety disorders (11.2%) were found to be the most common disorder among these psychiatric patients; this was followed by depressive disorder (8.4%), psychoactive substance use disorder (6.8%), sexual dysfunction (6.8%), bipolar mood disorder (0.4%), and schizophrenia (0.4%). Four percent of anxiety disorder was associated with psychoactive substance use disorder and sexual dysfunction. Similarly 3.6% of depressive disorder was found with psychoactive substance use disorder and sexual dysfunction while 1.6% of sexual dysfunction was associated with substance use disorder. Most of the patients in the sexually transmitted disease population recruited in the present study had both anxiety disorder and depressive disorder though majority of them were undetected and untreated. These findings underscore that special attention needs to be given to the mental health component of our health care delivery system.