The impact of anxiety and depression on quality of life in a cohort of inflammatory bowel disease patients from Northeastern of Brazil

This study aims to assess whether the association between chronic pathologies and depressive and/or anxious disorders is high, resulting in a reduction in the patient's quality of life. This is a prospective cross-sectional study with a descriptive and analytical design. Sociodemographic data and lifestyle habits were collected. Subsequently, the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Questionnaire (IBDQ) and the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) were applied. A total of 141 patients participated in the study, with a mean age of 45.78 (SD 16.01) years, of which 60.3% were female (n=85) and 39.7% were male (n=56). 58.9% had ulcerative colitis (UC) (n=83), and 41.1% had Crohn's disease (CD) (n=58). 16.5% of patients had a previous diagnosis of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and/or major depression (MD) (n=23). Regarding IBDQ scores, participants with anxiety had significantly lower mean scores in all IBDQ items (p