Profile of Depression and Anxiety Related Disorders in Women

Background: Depression and anxiety disorders are prevalent in women however there is less literature regarding the diagnostic types, symptom presentation and severity of anxiety and depression in women from India.  Aims & Objectives To assess diagnostic profile of depression and anxiety related disorders in women, demographic factors and symptom and severity profile of depression and neurotic, stress and anxiety related disorders in women.  Material & Methods: This study was a chart based review of records at Department of Psychiatry, MGM Medical College. The inclusion criteria comprised of women who presented with psychiatry symptoms and were diagnosed with Depression or Anxiety Related Disorders as per clinical records. Records where the female patients were less than 18 years or inconclusive diagnosis or diagnosis deferred were excluded from the study. The data collection form comprised of variables such as demographic factors, psychiatry diagnosis, HAM-D and HAM- A scores. Data was collected on excel sheet and analyzed with appropriate descriptive statistics. Results: We had a total sample size of n=50 women.  The mean age of the sample was 34.11 years with the minimum age being 18 years and 76% of women were married and majority of the sample 62% came from urban area. We found that depression related disorders in our sample were 36% and Anxiety related disorders were 54%.  We found that Depressive episode (27.8 %) was the most common depressive disorder and Panic disorder (21.8%) was the most common anxiety related disorder. In the sample of n=18 women with depression, the mean HAM-D score was 25.44 and in the sample of n=32 women with anxiety related disorders, the mean HAM-A score was 29.25.  50.0 % of women with depressive disorders had very severe scores of depressive symptoms as assessed by HAM-D and  56.2 % of women with anxiety related disorders had severe scores of anxiety symptoms as assessed by HAM-A. Conclusions : We conclude that depression and anxiety related disorders  can exist in women and can have different sub types of depression  and anxiety disorders and can have varied levels of symptom presentation and  severity profile of anxiety and depressive symptoms.