Association of Somatic Symptoms with Depressive Disorder

Abstract

Objectives: To determine the association of somatic symptoms with Depressive disorder. Study Design: Descriptive cross sectional study. Study Setting and Duration: At department of medicine and allied OPD at Pir Syed Abdul Qadir Shah Jeelani Institute of Medical sciences, GAMBAT, Sindh, Pakistan, from 10th August 2019 to 31st January 2020. Methodology: The sample size of the study was 140. All the patients of both gender between ages of 18 to 60 years, having depressive disorder as per ICD-10 (International classification of diseases version-10) criteria as mild, moderate and severe were enrolled. Somatic symptoms were assessed through somatic symptoms scale-8. The collected data was analyzed by Statistical Packages for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 22.0. Results: Among 140 clients 131 (93.60%) were females with age range of 22 to 44 years. Among all majority were married, illiterate and were household by occupation. Amongst all mostly were having severe depressive disorder 62.9% followed by 34.3% moderate depression and 2.9% mild depression. The somatic symptoms as per somatic symptoms scale-8 were assessed in relation to depressive disorder and it was found that all the somatic symptoms were strongly associated with depressive disorder having p value less than 0.05. Conclusion: From this study it is to be concluded that somatic symptoms are strongly associated with depression, consequently putting an adverse impact on over all outcome of disorder. Keywords: Association, Depression, Somatic