Objective: There is a close relationship between skin diseases and mood disorders. The possible reasons of this relationship could be the development of both systems by the same embryological origin, indirect impact of skin gesture, facial expression and social factors. Psychiatric symptoms may occur secondarily in patients with dermatological diseases such as psoriasis, vitiligo, alopecia, acne, hemangiomas, ichthyosis because of their appearance. In this study, we aimed to investigate self-esteem and related factors.
Method: Forty nine psoriatic patients, whose ages range between 20 and 56 years and who had no previous psychiatric disorder were admitted to the study. Thirty volunteers, whose sociodemographical characteristics were similar were included into the study as a control group. The patients were applied to the Rosenberg Self Esteem Scale (RSES) and Symptom Checklist-90-Revised (SCL-90-R). Lower RSES scores indicate higher self-esteem. Severity of the disease was calculated with Psoriais Area Severity Index (PASI). Severity of the disease was divided into the three groups according to PASI scores (<7:mild, 7-12:moderate, >12:severe)
Results: Age, education level, gender and marital status features were similar between the two groups. RSES scores were similar in the two group (Patient group: 1.06±0.80 and control group:1.05±0.06) (p>0.05). There were significant differences in RSES scores in all sub-groups of psoriatic patients. (p<0.05, t: 3.376). The disease severity and RSES scores were found to be correlated. RSES scores and SCL-90-R subscale scores were also found to be positively correlated.
Conclusion: The relationship between the skin diseases and psychiatric disorders were divided into three groups in the studies. The first one is psychophysiological disorder. The second one is primary psychiatric disease accompanied by dermatological symptoms. The third one is primary dermatological disease such as vitiligo and psoriasis accompanied by psychiatric disorders. In the literature there are some studies, which suggested that psoriatic patients have low self-esteem but our results were not consistent with this suggestion . We found a relationship between severity of the disease and self-esteem according to the PASI scores. As a result, we showed that psoriatic patients with high PASI scores have low self-esteem.