Depression and anxiety among cancer patients visiting a tertiary care cancer hospital

Cancer patients frequently experience psychological problems related to reactions to cancer diagnosis, cancer type and stage, treatment effects, recurrence, fear of end-of-life, survivorship, and financial burden. Depression and anxiety are both psychological and physiological disturbances among cancer patients.

To assess the prevalence of depression and anxiety among cancer patients attending a tertiary care cancer hospital.

A cross-sectional study was conducted at Bhaktapur Cancer Hospital in Kathmandu Valley among 220 cancer patients aged from 18 years to 70 years. Ethical approval was taken from the Institutional Review Committee of CiST College. Convenient sampling was used to interview patients with the standardized Patient-Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9) for Depression and Hospital Anxiety and Depression sub-scale (HADS-A) for anxiety. Epi-Data was used for data entry and transferred to SPSS Version 25 for analysis.

The study revealed that of 220 patients, most of the respondents belonged to the age group 51-60 years. More than half 131 (59.6%) of the respondents were female, most of them had depression, and one-third had anxiety. Among the respondents, 124 (56.4%) had mild depression, 70 (31.8%) had moderate depression, and 3 (1.3%) had severe depression; 79 (35.9%) had mild anxiety, 64 (29.1%) had moderate anxiety, and 4 (1.8%) had severe anxiety.

Most respondents were depressed and one-third had anxiety. More than half and nearly one-third had mild and moderate depression, respectively, and nearly one-third had mild and moderate anxiety, which is higher than other studies.