Depression and Anxiety Disorders in a Sample of Saudi Persons with Brain Tumor

BACKGROUND: Depression and anxiety (DA) are common in persons with brain tumor (PBT) and are associated with neurocognitive deficits. The terms DA and affective disorders are often used interchangeably in this study. Objective: This was a pilot study, conducted with the purpose of better assessing DA symptoms in association with socioeconomic and clinical characteristics in PBT.

METHOD: A cross-sectional study was conducted on a sample of PBT (N = 102), recruited from a neurosurgical department. The tools employed were the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II) and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS). The self-rating instruments proved feasible and reliable in screening for the severity of DA symptoms. The HADS is designed to measure the severity of anxiety and depressive symptoms in non-psychiatric hospital outpatients and does not assess the common somatic symptoms of these two disorders. The BDI-II evaluates the severity of depressive symptoms with items related to physical symptoms.

RESULTS: Although our study did not, for the most part, yield results of statistical significance, it, however, demonstrated that anxiety and depressive disorders existed in PBT, showing a relatively higher rate in age groups 30–49 years.

CONCLUSION: It was unclear whether these symptoms were invalidated by response bias, participant’s functional status, natural reaction to a fearing situation or just presentation of pseudodepression arose as a result of organic deficits. There is a need for further research to examine these factors.