Prevalence and associated physical symptoms of depressive and anxiety symptoms in neurology outpatient clinic

The co-occurrence of depressive and anxiety symptoms in a variety of neurological conditions are widely common and disabling. Furthermore, it could persist for a long time and interfere in the development of neurological disorders, and affect the prognosis of neurological disorders.1 However, despite their high incidence and jeopardy, depressive and anxiety symptoms remain under-recognised and undertreated.2 Most previous studies focused on depressive and anxiety symptoms in specific neurological diseases such as stroke, Parkinson’s disease, epilepsy and multiple sclerosis. However, the prevalence of depressive and anxiety symptoms in neurological diseases were reported differently, and few studies reported the situation in Asia. Furthermore, a number of outpatients are newly referred to general neurology clinics for different symptoms such as headache, dizziness, cerebrovascular diseases and insomnia. Hence, the prevalence of depressive and anxiety symptoms in these new patients at the neurology outpatient clinic remains unclear, and the symptoms which predict the experience of depressive and anxiety symptoms are still ambiguous. We aimed to investigate the prevalence of depressive and anxiety symptoms in newly referred patients at the general neurology outpatient clinics and determine the correlates for occurrence of these symptoms. Patients newly referred at the general neurology outpatient clinics were recruited from three centres in Shanghai (Shanghai Huashan, Shanghai Changhai, and Shanghai Zhongshan Hospital) during 17 January 2009 to 21 January 2011. Patients were screened randomly using random number table by resident neurologists followed by interview of attending doctors. Demographic information was collected and the Patient Health Questionnaire Depression (PHQ-9) as well as Generalized Anxiety Disorder Questionnaire scale (GAD-7) were used for assessing depressive and anxiety symptoms, respectively. When the patients with score of …