Prevalence of depression and anxiety is higher in men’s health clinics

In this interview, Nestor F. Suria Cordero, MD, discusses the study “Intersection of Sexual and Mental Health: Prevalence of Anxiety and Depression in a Men's Health Clinic and Feasibility of Mental Health Surveys,” presented at the 2023 Sexual Medicine Society of North America Fall Meeting. Cordero is a urology resident at the University of Puerto Rico, San Juan.

Transcription:

Please describe the background behind this study.

We know that anxiety and depression are the 2 most common mental health disorders in men, affecting 6% for depression and 4% for general anxiety disorder, so I wanted to look at how that seemed to be in men's health clinic. We have hypogonadism, we have erectile dysfunction, and mental health disorders definitely do have a role in these disease processes.

What were some of the notable findings?

We found that the prevalence of both depression and anxiety were significantly higher in the men's health clinic. And we also found that as depression severity increased, so did erectile dysfunction.

Is future research on this topic planned? If so, what would that focus on?

We need to expand our population size to get a better understanding of specifically which type of patients are more at risk of having depression and anxiety in the men's health clinic. We see a lot of erectile dysfunction hypogonadism, Peyronie disease, fertility evaluation, so we want to get a better idea of how depression and anxiety affect those different subsets of patients that we see in clinic.

Please discuss what a multidisciplinary approach to ED care looks like.

There are plenty of data that support that if men get treated with, let's say Viagra or Cialis, that'll improve their erectile dysfunction. But when these men who also have depression are treated for their depression through cognitive behavioral therapy, we have better outcomes. So definitely involving mental health practitioners, psychiatrists, psychologists, that's specifically important for mental health and as we see these patients in the men's health clinic as well.

This transcription was edited for clarity.