Psychological distress and disability in patients with vertigo

Objective: Vertigo is an extremely debilitating experience for the patient, especially during attacks; it is neither easy to identify nor control. The importance of psychosomatic factors has already been widely studied and di scussed. In particular, it has been shown that stress factors are relevant in setting off episodes of dizziness, but there is no agreement if the pres ence of distress might influence the vestibular disability. Methods: This s tudy is concerned with evaluating the quality of life (QOL) in a group of 2 06 patients suffering from vertigo and 86 control patients, using the UCLA- Dizziness Questionnaire (UCLA-DQ) scale. The results were correlated with t hose achieved using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) psycho metric test. Results: What is clear is that, in patients suffering from ver tigo as regards those who are not, there is a significant amount of anxiety and depression distress, especially in female subjects. There appears to b e no relationship between psychological change and the various forms of cli nical vertigo. In terms of the QOL parameter, what emerges is that, from a statistical point of view, fear of becoming dizzy is most closely correlate d with the perception of disability. Conclusions: There is a also a need fo r psyche-education here in collaboration with the E.N.T specialist so that the patient can learn to recognise his/her medical condition and be aware o f the factors that primarily contribute to the deterioration of their QOL. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Inc. All rights reserved.