Interstitial Lung Disease and Depression – A Questionnaire Based Study

Abstract

Background and Objective: Interstitial lung disease (ILD) causes depression due to its painful course in patients. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of depression and find the association of depression with selected clinical variables in patients with ILD. Methods: This questionnaire based cross-sectional study was done at the department of pulmonology, District head quarter hospital Sahiwal from 1st Oct 2019 to 31st March 2020. The questionnaire was distributed among the diagnosed cases of ILD who presented in outpatient department of DHQ Sahiwal after taking informed consent. The depression scoring was done in them according to Beck depression inventory II. Frequency distribution statistics and inferential statistics were done by using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 20. P-value < 0.05 was taken as statistically significant. Results: Depression was graded into four types according to Beck depression inventory II scoring system. Depression levels of minimal, mild, severe and extremely severe were found to have frequencies of 42.90, 14.30, 31.40 and 11.4% respectively. Depression was more prevalent in females (77.14%). Sixty two percent of severely depressed had rural background. Three fourth (75%) of severely depressed patients were from lower class group. Half of the severely depressed patients were suffering from hypertension. One fourth had ischemic heart disease. Illiteracy dominated in severely depressed where 3/4th of the participants had not received any education. Our study found statistically significant result of Beck score with socioeconomic groups (P = 0.037). High statistically significant result was also found when Beck scoring was associated with co-morbidities (P = 0.001). Conclusions: The increased frequency of depression in the patients of ILD was associated with many demographic factors. The development of improved methods for the assessment of ILD and its co-morbidities could have profound effects on the quality of life and expected survival of ILD patients.