Quality Of Life And Related Factors In Primary-care Patients With Generalized Anxiety Disorder

Objective To evaluate quality of life and related factors in primary-care patients with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), and comprehensively physiological and psychological information about patients, which could help the doctors who work in primary-care to assess the patients’ quality of life comprehensively.Methods Our research included94adult patients from January2009to October2011in6primary care settings. We assess the quality of life in GAD patients with the MOS36-item sort-form health survey (SF-36). SF-36form includes two parts, physical health of SF-36(PH) and mental health of SF-36(MH). Physical health includes general health (GH), physical function (PF), bodily pain (BP) and role-physical (RP). Mental health includes vitality (VT), social function (SF), mental health (MH) and role-emotional (RE). We chose outcomes of Wang Hongmei’s research as our control norm, which calculated the SF-36scores of Hangzhou citizens. We assess the severity of anxiety with the7-item anxiety scale (GAD-7) and Hamilton anxiety rating scale (HAMA). Assess the severity of depression with Hamilton depression rating scale (HAMD). Then, we explored the correlation between SF-36and GAD-7, HAMA.Results1. Main results. The results of this research showed that eight dimension scores of SF-36for the GAD patient with GH, PF, BP, RP, RE, SF, VT, the MH were13.29±39.14,73.67±22.13,72.44±21.56,32.98±37.25,35.82±38.87,59.57±22.33,49.41±16.94,46.30±16.08, respectively. To compare GAD patients’ quality of life with that of normal, the seven dimension scores(GH, PF, BP, RP, RE, SF, MH) for the GAD patient were lower than that of normal except VT, which is statistically significant (P<0.01).2. Minor results.(1) We compared SF-36score between different gender of GAD patient, the female’s PF was significant lower than that of male (P<0.05).(2) We divided the GAD patient into two groups according to the HAMD scores, patients with depression symptoms and those without depression symptoms. Their SF-36scores’ difference was non-significant statistically (P>0.05). The HAMA scores in those with depression symptoms were higher than that of the patient without depression symptoms, which was statistically significant (P=0.02).(3) The Pearson correlation coefficient was-0.257(P=0.006) which showed negative correlation between GAD-7score and SF-36total score.(4) The Pearson correlation coefficient was-0.083(P=0.214) which showed correlation between the HAMA score and SF-36total score.(5) Through calculating Pearson correlation coefficients in HAMA score, mental anxiety factor scores, somatic anxiety factor scores and SF-36seven dimension scores, we found that there was negatively correlation between somatic anxiety factor and role-physical(RP) only, and the Pearson correlation coefficient was-0.255(p<0.05).(6) Through calculating Pearson correlation coefficients in HAMA score, mental anxiety factor scores, somatic anxiety factor scores and SF-36physical health score and mental health score, we found that there was negatively correlation between somatic anxiety factor and physical health(MH), and the Pearson correlation coefficient was-0.252(p<0.05).Conclusion The quality of life in primary-care patients with GAD impaired. In the process of diagnosis and treatment of GAD in the primary-care, assessing the quality of life of patients should be considered, which may promote the improvement of patients’ quality of life.