Psychiatric disorders in patients with essential tremor

• Published in: Parkinsonism & related disorders Vol. 18; no. 8; pp. 971 - 973
• Main Authors: Fabbrini, Giovanni, Berardelli, Isabella, Falla, Marika, Moretti, Germana, Pasquini, Massimo, Altieri, Marta, Defazio, Giovanni, Biondi, Massimo, Berardelli, Alfredo
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England Elsevier Ltd 01.09.2012
• Subjects: Aged; Anxiety; Case-Control Studies; Depression; Depressive Disorder - diagnosis; Depressive Disorder - epidemiology; Depressive Disorder - psychology; Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders; Essential tremor; Essential Tremor - diagnosis; Essential Tremor - epidemiology; Essential Tremor - psychology; Female; Humans; Indexing in process; Male; Mental Disorders - diagnosis; Mental Disorders - epidemiology; Mental Disorders - psychology; Middle Aged; Neurology; Personality disorders; Personality Disorders - diagnosis; Personality Disorders - epidemiology; Personality Disorders - psychology; Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; Depression; Anxiety; Personality disorders; Essential tremor
• ISSN: 1353-8020; 1873-5126; 1873-5126
• DOI: 10.1016/j.parkreldis.2012.05.005

Previous studies have reported that a consistent proportion of patients with Essential Tremor may have psychiatric disorders but it is unclear whether these disorders are increased in frequency as compared to healthy subjects. In a case-control study, we adopted the structured interviews for DSM-IV, SCID-I and SCID-II, to investigate psychiatric and personality disorders in 37 ET patients and 34 healthy subjects. As cognitive changes in ET may be a confounding factor we enrolled patients and healthy control subjects without cognitive dysfunction. SCID-I showed that Axis-I psychiatric disorders, mainly depressive disorders, were more frequent in ET patients (20 of 37; 54%) than in healthy subjects (8 of 34; 22%) (p < 0.01). Depressive disorders were more frequent in patients with a family history of ET (p < 0.05) in comparison to patients without a family history. SCID-II disclosed that the frequency of personality disorders was similar in patients with ET and healthy subjects. Psychiatric disorders may be associated to the neurological manifestations of ET.