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NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - While people with rheumatoid arthritis often feel depressed, few discuss this with their doctors, according to a new report.
Rheumatoid arthritis sufferers are twice as likely as members of the general population to experience depression, Dr. Betsy Sleath of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and a multicenter team point out in the medical journal Arthritis & Rheumatism.
For their study, the researchers recruited 200 rheumatoid arthritis patients and eight rheumatologists. The patients' visits to their rheumatologist were audiotaped, and the patients were interviewed after their visits.
Twenty-one patients (10.5 percent) had moderate to severe symptoms of depression. The researchers found that patients whose functional status was most severely impacted by their arthritis were more than twice as likely to have moderate to severe depressive symptoms compared to those with better functional status.
Of the 21 patients with depression, only four discussed depression during their visits to their doctor -- and in every case, the patients brought up the subject.
"These findings indicate that communication about depression needs to be improved between rheumatoid arthritis patients and their doctors," Sleath said in an interview with Reuters Health.
Doctors should ask patients with rheumatoid arthritis if they are experiencing depressive symptoms, and "patients need to be encouraged to let their doctors know if they feel depressed," Sleath said.
"There is often a stigma attached to depression which prevents individuals from discussing how they feel with family, friends, or physicians," she pointed out. "But if individuals do not talk about it, it prevents them from getting treatment that may help them."
SOURCE: Arthritis & Rheumatism, February 2008.
