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Section 24 Question 24 | Test
| Table of Contents Introduction Patients with skin problems often report anxiety and patients with primary anxiety disorders frequently report poor sleep quality. Additionally, individuals with PE have high incidence of comorbid anxiety disorders. However, the sleep quality in individuals with PE is not known. As part of a larger study investigating the prevalence of anxiety and impulse disorders in skin picking patients, we evaluated the subjective sleep of patients with pathological excoriation. Our preliminary observations indicate that patients with pathological excoriations have high rates of subjective sleep disturbance and anxiety, which can lead to significant work and social dysfunction. Subjects and Methods Sleep related complaints were neither an inclusion nor an exclusion criterion. A third group of sex-matched and age-comparable healthy control subjects with no current or past history of any sleep or psychiatric disorder were recruited through a newspaper advertisement. None of the subjects in the healthy control group voluntarily reported any evidence of skin problems, including pruritis, during the administration of the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (SCID-I); however, these subjects were not formally examined by a dermatologist to rule out PE or other primary skin diseases. All subjects completed the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI), which consists of 19 self-rated questions designed to assess sleep quality in the preceding month. These 19 items are grouped into 7 component scores; each is weighted equally on a 0 to 3 scale. The seven component scores are then totaled to provide a global PSQI score, which has a range of 0 to 21, with higher scores indicating worse sleep quality. PSQI has been shown to be a valid and reliable instrument to assess subjective sleep quality. We took the global score as an index of sleep quality in our study. The subjects also completed two measures of anxiety: the State and Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) and a modified version of the Zung Anxiety Scale. All subjects were administered the Perceived Stress Scale (PSS) and the Work and Social Disability subscale of the Sheehan Disability Inventory (SDI-4). In addition the subjects with dermatological complaints, with or without PE, completed a self-rated questionnaire developed by two of the authors (L.S. and T.W.U.; instrument will be provided upon request) to assess skin-picking habits. Results However, compared with the NonPE-DERM group, those patients with PE scored higher on every outcome measure and there was a trend (P ¼.072) toward increased trait anxiety in those with pathological excoriations. In fact, a power analysis indicated that sample sizes of only 20 subjects in each of the DERM subgroups would be needed to demonstrate statistically significant group differences on measures of state anxiety and trait anxiety. Moreover, skin picking patients, as identified by the presence of pathological excoriations during dermatological examinations, were the only patients to have significantly and consistently elevated scores on measures of sleep disturbance, perceived stress, and all measures of anxiety. There were no significant associations between ratings of subjective sleep quality and ratings of anxiety in either the healthy controls or in the dermatological patients without pathological excoriations. In contrast, in patients with pathological excoriations, there were highly significant and positive correlations between ratings of poor subjective sleep and ratings of anxiety on the Spielberger State and Zung but not Spielberger Trait anxiety scales. Discussion None of the patients in this study were evaluated by polysomnography and the relationship between skin problems and objective sleep indices will be the focus of future research by our laboratory. Of interest is the possible association between skin-picking behaviors and sleep and sleep deprivation. Almost all of the individuals in this study were aware of their skin picking or scratching behaviors, although some individuals with skin-picking behaviors are unable to recall picking their skin despite the presence of lesions. Whether physical excoriations are in part or whole a sleep-related injury in a subset of individuals must be determined in the future. That patients seeking treatment for skin problems in a private dermatology practice have high degrees of distress and comorbid anxiety is not an unexpected finding. Our observations, in a preliminary exploratory study, suggest that a subgroup of dermatology patients with skin picking behaviors, as evidenced by pathological excoriations, may be particularly anxious. Our skin-picking patients reported high levels of anxiety and distress on several rating scales of anxiety, including those, which target both ‘‘psychological’’ (i.e., state anxiety) and ‘‘physiological’’ (i.e., Zung) manifestations of anxiety. While the subgroup of dermatological patients with skin-picking behaviors reported the greatest problems with anxiety and sleep disturbances, our study was not designed to examine the cause-effect relationships among these factors. Anxiety and subjective stress can cause poor sleep and poor subjective quality of sleep may lead to anxiety and higher perceived stress. Therefore, it is possible that higher anxiety levels in the skin-picking patients may predispose to poor sleep or that poor sleep may contribute to anxiety in these patients. It is also possible that a common underlying biological factor contributes to both increased anxiety and sleep problems in the skin-picking patients. There appeared to be positive association between sleep disturbances and the degree of work and social disability in the dermatological patients as a group; however, only those with pathological excoriations reported that their problems markedly or radically changed or prevented normal work or social activities (20% of skin pickers). Taken together, our findings suggest that patients with pathological excoriations tend to be anxious and complain of more severe sleep disturbances than nonskin picking dermatological patients. In some cases, patients with pathological excoriations may develop severe work and social disability. Our exploratory findings in a small but controlled study underscore the need for a larger study to investigate the phenomenology, course of illness, sleep physiology, and treatment of patients with skin picking and related neurodermatological syndromes. Update - Aldabayan, Y. S., Alqahtani, J. S., Al Rajeh, A. M., Abdelhafez, A. I., Siraj, R. A., Thirunavukkarasu, V., & Aldhahir, A. M. (2022). Prevalence and Predictors of Sleep Disturbance, Anxiety and Depression among Patients with Chronic Respiratory Diseases. International journal of environmental research and public health, 19(19), 12819. Peer-Reviewed Journal Article References: QUESTION 24
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