Anxiety disorders comorbidity in bipolar I, bipolar II and unipolar major depression: results from a population-based study in Hungary.

BACKGROUND

The aim of this study was to analyze the lifetime comorbidity between DSM-III-R anxiety disorders in separate subgroups of patients with major depression, bipolar II and bipolar I disorder in a community sample of a Hungarian population.

METHODS

Randomly selected subjects (aged between 18 and 64 years, N=2953) were interviewed by the Diagnostic Interview Schedule (DIS) which generated DSM-III-R diagnoses.

RESULTS

The prevalence of generalized anxiety disorder, agoraphobia and simple phobia was the highest among bipolar II patients (20.8, 37.5 and 16.7%, respectively), social phobia was most prevalent in (nonbipolar) major depression (17.6%), while the rate of panic disorder was the same in the (nonbipolar) major depressive and bipolar II subgroups (12.4 and 12.5%, respectively). Bipolar I patients showed a relatively low rate of comorbidity.

CONCLUSIONS

The findings support previous results on the particularly high rate of lifetime comorbidity between anxiety disorders and unipolar major depression and particularly bipolar II illness.

LIMITATIONS: Underestimation of the prevalence of bipolar II disorder by the diagnostic methodology used, resulting in a small number of bipolar II cases, lack of analysis of data by gender, no data on obsessive-compulsive disorder.