A research team at St. Mary’s hospital has found that patients who have psoriasis are at higher risk of suffering from mental illness, including anxiety, depression, and neuropsychiatric disorders.

The team confirmed such theories after analyzing 12,762 patients diagnosed with psoriasis and mental illness from 2002 to 2013 based on data from the Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service. The research classified the mental disease as a patient with symptoms such as depression, acute stress reactions, and anxiety, somatoform, neurotic, and non-temperamental sleep disorders.

It found that patients with psoriasis had more than two times higher risk of developing mental illnesses, excluding acute stress response, as compared to the standard control group without psoriasis.

Among the symptoms, anxiety disorder was the highest at 2.92 times, followed by neurotic disorder (2.66 times), somatoform disorder (2.62 times), non-temperamental sleep disorder (2.58 times). The study also found that women were most likely to develop depression, and men were more likely to have neurotic and somatoform disorders.

Acute stress response took patients the shortest time to portray symptoms (61 days), while depression and neurotic disorder had the most extended term before the patients started showing signs (196 days and 224 days, respectively).

Anxiety, somatoform, and non-temperamental sleep disorders took about three months for patients to develop the symptoms.

“Patients with psoriasis have a high risk of suffering from mental illness, and some diseases can occur within two to three months,” said Professor Lee Ji-hyun, co-author of the paper and professor of dermatology at the hospital. “If psoriasis patients have anxiety, depression, or insomnia symptoms, it is crucial to have early interdisciplinary care involving dermatology and mental health specialists.”

JAMA Dermatology published the result of the study.