Mental disorders in leprosy: an underdiagnosed and untreated population

To describe the frequency of psychiatric comorbidities in leprosy patients and check if they had been previously diagnosed and were in psychiatric care.

The study was conducted with a sample of 120 leprosy patients being treated at two reference hospitals for leprosy in Salvador, Bahia, Brazil. Survey participants were more than 18 years of age, had a confirmed diagnosis of leprosy and was undergoing antimicrobial treatment. Patients were evaluated face-to-face with a socio-demographic questionnaire and the Mini-International Neuropsychiatric Interview (MINI-Plus) in Portuguese. The period of data collection was between October 2009 and June 2012.

The assessment using the MINI-Plus showed that 34 (28.3%) patients did not receive any psychiatric diagnosis and 86 (71.7%) met the criteria for at least one. Of these 86 patients, 25 (20.8%) had one diagnosis, 26 (21.7%) had two diagnoses and the rest, 35 (29.2%), had three or more psychiatric diagnoses. All patients with a moderate or high risk of suicide had one or more psychiatric comorbidities.

Leprosy patients have a high prevalence of psychiatric comorbidities. Furthermore, most of them had no previous psychiatric diagnosis and the majority was not undergoing treatment.