Anxiety and Depression Symptoms in Dysphonia Patients before and after Speech Therapy

Introduction: There are few clinical trials that analyze emotional symptoms in dysphonic.

Objective: To measure emotional symptoms before and after voice therapy in dysphonic.

Methods: It is an uncontrolled clinical trial with patients who attended voice therapy at the outpatient clinic of a hospital (southern Brazil). All the patients underwent otorhinolaryngologic assessment for laryngeal disorder diagnosis. Perceptual-auditory voice assessment (GRBASI scale) and Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) were applied before and after voice therapy. Mann-Whitney, Wilcoxon, and Pearson Correlation tests were carried out, maximum significance level of 5% (p ≤ 0.05), SPSS 16.0. It was approved by Ethics Committee of Institution (record 986/12).

Data synthesis: For the study 68 patients were taken, 23 (33.82%) were men, mean age of 49 years (SD 19.14). Anxiety symptoms prevalence was 39.7% in women and 14.7% in men. Depression symptoms prevalence was 20.59% in women and 11.76% in men. It was observed that there is significant correlation between these symptoms and participants' age, indicating that younger patients had higher anxiety scores and older had higher depression scores. Comparisons between GRBASI and HADS scores before and after voice therapy showed statistically significant findings, indicating that voice therapy improves voice and reduces emotional symptoms. This reduction is attributed to the effects of psychology-psychiatry referrals, voice therapy techniques, and patient’s behavior changes due to healthcare.

Conclusion: Findings indicate a high number of dysphonic with emotional symptoms, with improvement of voice and emotional aspects after intervention. The need for controlled trials and the importance of interdisciplinary interventions are pointed out.