The prevalance of psychological changes in dermatologic patients in an acute care setting

There is a lot of information in the literature about psychological disturb ances in somatic diseases. For dermatological patients such data are not av ailable. In early spring 1998 we studied the psychological changes in 247 h ospitalized patients in the dermatological department of the Ruhr Universit y Bochum. We used the German version of the internationally accepted Hospit al Anxiety and Depression Scale. We found the prevalance of psychological a lterations ranged between 25,9% and 31%. The prevalence of psychological di sturbances was a little higher than that seen in oncological, cardiological or neurological patient populations. Surprisingly skin cancer patients wer e less affected than patients with chronic inflammatory or angiological dis eases. These results underline the necessity of improved psychological ther apeutical strategies which must be standardized and evaluated.