Background: >Patients with functional gastrointestinal disorders have a high psychiatric co-morbidity. This study aimed to investigate and characterise gastrointestinal symptoms in relation to depressive symptoms and trait anxiety in a well-defined population of young adult psychiatric outpatients and healthy controls.
Methods: Gastrointestinal symptoms were assessed with the Gastrointestinal Symptom Rating Scale for Irritable Bowel Syndrome (GSRS-IBS). Depressive symptoms were assessed with the Montgomery-Åsberg Depression Rating Scale- Self assessment (MADRS-S). Trait anxiety was estimated with three of the Swedish universities of Personality (SSP) scales: Somatic trait anxiety, Psychic trait anxiety and Stress susceptibility. Self-ratings were collected from 491 young adult psychiatric outpatients and 85 healthy controls. Gastrointestinal symptom severity was compared between patients with and without current psychotropic medication and controls. Associations between gastrointestinal symptoms, depressive symptoms and trait anxiety were assessed using Spearman's coefficients and generalized linear models adjusting for possible confounders (sex, body mass index, bulimia nervosa).
Results: Patients, with and without current psychotropic medication, reported significantly more gastrointestinal symptoms than controls. In the generalized linear models, total MADRS-S score (p < 0.001), Somatic trait anxiety (p < 0.001), Psychic trait anxiety (p = 0.002) and Stress susceptibility (p = 0.002) were independent predictors of the total GSRS-IBS score. Further exploratory analysis using unsupervised learning revealed a diverse spectrum of symptoms that clustered into six groups.
Conclusion: Gastrointestinal symptoms are both highly prevalent and diverse in young adult psychiatric outpatients, regardless of current psychotropic medication. Depressive symptom severity and degree of trait anxiety are independently related to the total gastrointestinal symptom burden.
Keywords: Anxiety disorder; Depressive disorder; Irritable bowel syndromes; Personality.