Psychiatric and psychosocial disorders in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus: a longitudinal study of active and inactive stages of the disease

The objective was to analyze psychiatric disorders and psychosocial dysfunc tion in patients with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), studied longitudi nally during active and subsequent inactive stage of their disease. During a 6 month period of study, we selected 20 consecutive patients with SLE who presented with a SLE flare. All patients fulfilled the 1982 revised criteria of the American College of Rheumatology for the classification of SLE. When patients entered the study, we performed psychiatric (CIS, RDC, STAI, HD, BDI, GHQ and MMS) psychosocial (GAS and VAS-P) scores assessment. One year later, we repeated the psychiatric and psychosocial assessment wh en patients showed inactive disease. The 20 patients evaluated were women, with a mean age of 34y (SE 14.4, rang e 20-57). According to CIS evaluation, we diagnosed 8 (40%) psychiatric cas es in the acute episode of SLE. The RDC diagnosis showed generalized anxiet y in 5 patients, panic disorders in 2 patients and generalized anxiety plus depressive symptoms in one patient. One year later, when patients did not show disease activity, we diagnosed 2 (10%) psychiatric cases (P < 0.05). W hen SLE patients were clinically inactive, they showed lower levels of psyc hological distress (GHQ scale, 1.8 vs 5.6, P < 0.001), with a lower grade o f anxiety measured by both HA (3.2 vs 8.2, P < 0.01) and STAI-S (7.95 vs 20 .90, P < 0.001) scales. We also found a lower score in pain perception (VAS -P) (2.80 Ils 4.25, P < 0.01) and higher occupational activity (VAS-P) (83. 9 vs 66.2, P < 0.01) and general functioning (GAS) (93.75 vs 83.50, P < 0.0 5) during the inactive stage. No significant differences were found when we compared cognitive impairment, grade of depression and physical disability between inactive and active stages. We conclude that in SLE patients, psychiatric and psychosocial disorders du ring acute episodes are usually mild and seem to be related to the psycholo gical impact of disease activity on patients. This type of psychiatric path ology is similar to that which would be expected in other groups coping wit h a stressful event, indicating that our patients did not react in a way sp ecifically determined by their systemic disease.