Type D personality disorder in psychodermatologic disorders, stress and psychiatric symptomatology: Is it my soul that is ill or is it my skin?

AİM: To detect type D personality prevelance in dermatological disorders that , according to Koo and Lee classification, may cause a psychiatric symptom, and in disorders that are caused or aggravated by a psychophysiologic stress and to compare demographic variables, stressfull life events, subjective experiences in response to stress, coping ways with stress, perceived social support and psychiatric comorbidity between patients that have a type D personality and that do not have a type D personalityMETOD: 181 inpatients and outpatients who have applied to Gazi University Faculty of Medicine Department of Dermatology and got a psychodermatologic disorder diagnosis according to Koo and Lee classification and 57 healthy controls both of whom knew how to read and write and were between 18-65 years old were included in the study. Sociodemographic data form, DS 14 scale, brief symptom inventory, hospital anxiety and depression scale, stressfull life events scanning survey, coping ways with stress scale, perceived social support scale were applied to the subjects. Analysis of the data was done by using SPSS 17 programmeRESULTS: When psychodermatology patients were compared with healthy controls, stressfull life events and being effected by this event subjectively, coping ways with stress, perceived social support , hads and bse subscale points were significantly different. In psychodermatology type D personality prevelance was found to be 34.8 % . When psychodermatology patients ,that have a type D personality and that don`t have a type D personality , were compared for psychosocial stressor existence, number of stressfull life events and and being effected by this event subjectively, coping ways with stress, perceived social support, hads and bse subscale points at the time when the disorder began, a significant difference was found.DİSCUSSİON: This study points out that considering type D personality features preferentially in patients that were diagnosed with a psychodermatologic disorder and were directed to psychiatry, would ease psychiatric assessment in these patients and that this group of patients? psychiatric evaluation should be done in more detail.