Psychosocial stress as an indicator for disease severity, impairments in mental health, medication and health care utilization in patients with Crohn's disease (CD) or ulcerative…

Introduction: IBD are chronic relapsing diseases. Recent studies show associations of stress exposures and active disease [1–3]. This study investigates associations of perceived stress with disease activity, mental health and health care utilization (medication, adherence; contacts with professionals; utilization of psychotherapy) and evaluated an indicator scale for psychosocial impairments [4,5] and health care issues. Methods: German health care survey data [6] of 1018 IBD patients (65% female, 58% CD) were analyzed. The questionnaire referred to perceived stress, disease activity (GIBDI-Score [5,7]), anxiet…