Crohn's disease (CD) is a chronic, recurrent inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) that can affect the entire bowel. Psychological disturbances are frequent in Crohn's disease (CD) patients. The present study aims to determine the frequency with which depression and anxiety occur in patients with Chron disease (CD). We searched some sociodemographic and medical variables and we followed the relationship between depression and age, stage of evolution and disease duration.

Were followed two groups of patients (sex ratio F : M - 1/1): a group of 45 patients diagnosed with CD and control group of 45 patients with enterocolitis (EC). We applied the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) to assess depression, and State Trait Anxiety Inventory (Spilberger) to assess anxiety.

Our results showed that 62.34% of patients with CD presented moderate and severe depression, unlike the control group, where only 16.46% had moderate or severe depression.

In both groups we found higher levels of anxiety than average, suggesting that this is a greater extent associated with IBD.

The levels of anxiety and depression of CD patients with active disease were higher than that of the EC, but not of the CD patients in remission. The depression score of the CD sample was higher than that of the EC sample (P < 0.001). There was no significant difference in trait anxiety among groups. Based on these results, we conclude that screening for depression and anxiety should be carried out routinely as part of quality of care improvement in CD individuals.