Frequency of depression and anxiety among heart failure patients in a tertiary care hospital of Faisalabad, Pakistan

: Heart failure (HF) is a chronic illness with high prevalence and mortality, leading to economic burden of health due to prolonged hospital stay and re-admissions. Failure to comprehend the importance of identifying mental illnesses could lead to explanations that why the morbidity and mortality of heart failure patients endure to be very high. Objective: To determine the frequency of anxiety and depression in heart failure patients. Methods: It is a descriptive cross sectional study including 323 CHF patients admitted to the Faisalabad Institute of Cardiology hospital, 250 were males and 73 were females, mean age was 54.1 ± 9.2 years having 70 years as maximum and 25 years as minimum. Data was collected with the help of HADS questionnaire. Patients were interviewed for assessment of anxiety and depression. Data was analyzed using SPSS version 24. Mean and standard deviation was calculated for quantitative data and for qualitative data frequency and percentages was calculated. To measure the association of anxiety and depression with age categories and gender, chi square test was used. P values less than and equal to 0.05 were taken as significant. Results: The results showed that 43% subjects had <11 score indicating no anxiety, 57% had >11 score indicating anxiety. 45% subjects had<11 score indicating no depression, 55% had >11 score indicating depression. Conclusions: The study concluded that frequency of depression and anxiety is high in congestive heart failure patients. Strategies are required to assess and diagnose these mental illnesses to establish early treatment which may foster multidisciplinary health care team approach and interventions that address the psychological burden.