Psychiatric factors in patients with ulcerative colitis according to disease activity

Abstract

In order to examine psychiatric symptoms, hostility and stressful life events in patients suffering from Ulcerative Colitis (UC) during the phases of active disease and remission, a consecutive sample of twenty five UC patients were examined during an active phase and after undergoing a clinical remission. All patients completed the Hostility and Direction of Hostility Questionnaire (HDHQ), the Delusions Symptoms States Inventory/states of Anxiety and Depression (DSSI/sAD), the Symptom Check List-90R (SCL-90R), and a shortened form of the Schedule of Recent Experiences (SRE). On the HDHQ the patients showed very high levels of total hostility, extrapunitiveness and intropunitiveness with no statistically significant differences between the two phases. Regarding psychiatric symptoms, the active phase patients scored significantly higher than the inactive patients on the anxiety and depression subscales of DSSI/sAD and the somatization subscale of the SCL-90R. Female active phase patients reported substantially higher scores than males on the anxiety and depression subscales of DSSI/sAD and the SCI-90R subscales of anxiety, somatizacion, obsessive compulsiveness and depression. On the SRE remission phase patients reported higher scores but the difference was not significant. Females in remission, however, reported significantly higher scores whereas males in remission reported lower scores. The finding that UC patients presented high levels of hostility, somatization, anxiety and depression even during remission of the disease, could be of clinical importance. Hostility features and recollection of life events changed through different patterns in both sexes and the differences observed between them may suggest important different sex patterns when reacting to a chronic and frustrating illness.