The impact role of childhood traumas and life events in patients with alopecia aerate and psoriasis

Alopecia areata (AA) causes pyschiatric comorbidity as anxiety disorder and major depression, and some investigators believe that it is associated with stressfull life events and childhood traumatic events. The studies about both childhood traumatic events and stressful life events are limited and their results are conflicting. The aim of this study is to compare AA patients with control groups consisted of psoriasis patients and healthy individuals in means of social demographic data, life events, childhood travma, anxiety and depression scores. We investigated whether the stressful life events and the childhood traumatic events related with AA in the literature differ among AA patients, psoriasis patients, and the healthy individuals. Forty-one patients with the diagnosis of AA and thirty-one psoriasis patients who were seen at the Department of Dermatology Outpatient Clinic, Baskent University and fifty healthy individuals without any psychiatric diagnosis according to CIDI were matched with respect to their ages, sex, educational status were compared in means of social demographic data, life events, childhood travma, anxiety and depression scores. Each group completed the Childhood Traumatic Events Checklist, the Life Events Checklist, the Beck Depression Inventory, the Beck Anxiety Inventory, the CIDI (anxiety and depression parts) and the sociodemographic data questionnaire. Our results indicated that the rate of the childhood traumatic events, the stressful life events, the rate and severity of anxiety and depression were significantly higher in AA patients than healthy controls but there were no significant difference between AA and psoriasis patients.