172

A COMPARISON OF SELF-PERCEIVED GENERAL AND MENTAL HEALTH AND STRESS LEVELS IN IBD AND IBS PATIENTS FROM A NATIONAL CANADIAN SURVEY

LYL Tang, A Nabalamba, LA Graff, CN Bernstein
Department of Gastroenterology, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: We aimed to determine whether there are any differences with regards to self-perceptions of physical and mental health as well as stress levels in patients with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) compared to patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).
METHODS: The information was abstracted from the 2005 Canadian Community Health Survey including 132,947 Canadians weighted to represent approximately 27.1 individuals aged 12 years or older. Respondents were asked whether they had any of Crohn's disease (CD), ulcerative colitis (UC), irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) or incontinence. 4516 respondents (490 CD, 645 UC and 3,381 IBS) further completed a questionnaire where they answered questions regarding their perception of their health (excellent, very good, good, fair, poor), perception of their mental health (excellent, very good, good, fair, poor) and the amount of stress in their life (not at all stressed, a bit stressful, quite a bit stressful, very stressful or extremely stressful). The data were evaluated using SAS programming and adjusted for multiple comparisons with exacted Alpha/L Method. The prevalence for CD was 0.4%, UC was 0.5% and IBS was 2.5% in the population surveyed.
RESULTS: Overall, IBD patients had similar reports of self-perceived health compared to IBS patients but there was a tendency to report being in fair condition (p=0.01) and less often in very good condition (p=0.06). With regards to self-perceived mental health, IBS patients were more likely than IBD patients to report fair or poor self-perceived mental health (p=0.0002). Finally, IBS patients were more likely than IBD patients to report that most days are quite a bit or extremely stressful (p=0.0002).
CONCLUSIONS: While IBD is an inflammatory condition and more typically requires hospitalization and even surgery compared to IBS, self-perceived general health was similar between IBD and IBS. The increase in self-reporting fair health in IBD might reflect the small group with chronically active disease. However, IBS patients report greater self-perceived stress and less mental well being compared to IBD patients. The advantage of our study is the use of a countrywide population-based database.

PREVIOUS NEXT