A perspective study of cutaneous manifestations in primary psychiatric disorders in a tertiary care hospital

Cutaneous disorders are frequently seen in psychiatric patients. This may be attributed to the common ectodermal origin of skin and neurons. There is a paucity of data on cutaneous comorbidity in primary psychiatric disorders.

The aim of this study is to determine the pattern of cutaneous manifestations in patients with primary psychiatric disorders.

This was a hospital-based observational study.

A total of 210 patients suffering from various psychiatric disorders along with associated skin disease were recruited. Patients with an age <18 years and with history of substance abuse were excluded from this study.

IBM SPSS Statistics, version 22 (IBM Corp, Armonk, NY, USA) was used for the statistical analysis.

A total of 314 cutaneous manifestations were observed in the psychiatric patients recruited in this study. Among the patients surveyed, 88 patients were male (41.9%) and the remaining 122 patients (58.1%) were female. Primary psychiatric conditions observed were schizophrenia (25.7%), major depressive disorder (23.8%), bipolar mood disorder (23.3%), and psychosis not otherwise specified (11.9%). A majority (63.06%) of the cutaneous manifestations were noninfective dermatoses, and the rest (36.94%) were infective dermatoses. Fungal skin infections and eczema were seen in 33.8% and 24.8% of the cases, respectively. Seborrheic dermatitis (16.2%) was the most common eczema encountered. Nearly 75.2% of cases were found to have an insight into their skin problems. The common medical comorbidities seen in our patients were diabetes mellitus and hypertension.

In our study, cutaneous manifestations were quite common in primary psychiatric disorders. A collaborative approach, between psychiatry and dermatology, should be an integral part of management in such cases.