Prevalence of Psychiatric Morbidity and Cognitive Impairment among Patients Attending the Rural Noncommunicable Disease Clinic

Objective This study aimed to assess the prevalence of cognitive impairment and psychiatric morbidity among the patients attending the rural noncommunicable disease clinic after controlling for various confounders (i.e., psychological morbidity, obesity, gender, level of education, duration of the illness and age). Methods One- hundred twenty-four patients were evaluated on the Hindi Mental State Examination for the cognitive function, Physical Health Questionnaire-9 for depression, and Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 for anxiety disorders. Results About one-fourth (26.6%) of the participants had cognitive impairment. The prevalence of cognitive impairment was more among patients with hypertension (35.5%) as compared with the diabetes mellitus (13.6%) and those with comorbid hypertension and diabetes mellitus (26.6%). About one of the participants had depression (35.5%) and 29% of the patients had anxiety disorder. No significant difference was found in the level of cognitive deficits between those with hypertension and diabetes mellitus, when the confounding factors were not taken into account in the analysis. However, after controlling for psychiatric morbidity, obesity, gender, level of education, duration of the illness and age, those with hypertension were found to have significantly higher level of cognitive impairment compared with those with diabetes mellitus. A higher level of dysfunction was seen in the domains of orientation, registration, attention, recall, language, and visuospatial domains. Conclusion Present study suggests that patients of hypertension have higher level of cognitive impairment, when compared with those with diabetes mellitus, even after controlling for various confounders. Lack of difference between the two groups can be accounted by the confounding variables.