Screening for depression, anxiety, and suicidality in outpatients of a tertiary epilepsy center: How frequent are increased scores and what is recommended?

OBJECTIVE

Psychiatric comorbidities are frequent in people with epilepsy (PWE) or psychogenic nonepileptic seizures (PNES), and the use of validated screening instruments to identify respective symptoms is recommended. Our aim was to investigate the recommendations resulting from routine screening for depression, anxiety and suicidality with the Neurological Disorders Depression Inventory for Epilepsy (NDDI-E) and the Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale (GAD-7) in the outpatient clinic of a tertiary epilepsy center.

METHODS

We retrospectively analyzed NDDI-E and GAD-7 scores (German versions) of 264 outpatients at a tertiary epilepsy center and extracted recommendations regarding psychopathology from the outpatient letters.

RESULTS

The screening revealed a likely major depression (NDDI-E ≥17) in 15.2% of PWE (without PNES, 30/197) and an NDDI-E score ≥17 in 51.2% of patients with PNES ± epilepsy (21/41), moderate to severe symptoms of generalized anxiety (GAD-7 ≥10) in 20.3% of PWE (40/197) and 56.1% of patients with PNES (23/41), and a high risk of suicidality (NDDI-E item 4 ≥3) in 8.1% of PWE (16/197) and in 24.4% of patients with PNES (10/41). The most frequently given recommendations regarding depression or anxiety were a psychiatric/psychotherapeutic treatment for PWE and an admission to the psychotherapy ward of the epilepsy center for patients with PNES. No evidence for active suicidal tendencies was found in any of the patients with a positive screening for suicidality.

CONCLUSION

Routine screening with NDDI-E and GAD-7 for depression, anxiety and suicidality is efficient and feasible and leads to individual recommendations for further assessment and treatment.