Sarcouncil Journal of Internal Medicine and Public Health

Abstract: Background: Chronic tinnitus, defined as hearing a sound without any outside acoustic cue, that keeps going for more than three months, shows up in about 10–15% of adults worldwide, and it becomes a major load on people’s day to day life as well as on healthcare systems Objective: This cross-sectional work tried to find how common psychiatric comorbidities are in people with chronic tinnitus, and also to look at the link between tinnitus intensity and psychological distress in 89 patients Methods: We enrolled 89 adult patients (51 males, 38 females; mean age 52.3 ± 13.7 years) who were diagnosed with chronic subjective tinnitus over a 14-month span. We measured tinnitus severity with • The Tinnitus Handicap Inventory (THI) and the Tinnitus Functional Index (TFI). For psychiatric assessments • diagnoses were made using the Mini International Neuropsychiatric Interview (MINI 7.0), and that was supported with the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9) • the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7) • The General Health Questionnaire-12 (GHQ-12). Sleep quality was evaluated using the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) plus the Insomnia Severity Index (ISI). Health related quality of life was checked with the 36-Item Short Form Health Survey (SF-36). Results: the mean tinnitus disorder index (THI) score came out to 48.6 ± 22.4. Generalized anxiety disorder (37.1%), major depressive disorder (31.5%), and insomnia disorder (46.1%) were among the more common diagnoses. A strong link was found between tinnitus severity and sleep problems, where Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) values went up from 6.3 ± 3.1 in the mild tinnitus group, to 13.2 ± 3.8 in the severe group, p < 0.001. Patients who had more than one co-occurring psychiatric condition had clearly lower SF-36 scores across every domain, and the biggest gaps showed up in the affective role area (26.0 points, p < 0.001) and the mental health domain (21.9 points, p < 0.001).