Psychiatric morbidity in displaced leprosy patients.

One hundred confirmed leprosy patients, all of them migrated from elsewhere, were examined for psychiatric co-morbidity. Forty-six of them were from an 'ashram' and the others were from a slum area. 76% of the patients were found to be having psychiatric illness. Of these, 55% were having neurotic depression and 21% had anxiety neurosis. Single, unemployed, socio-economically backward and patients with physical deformities were suffering significantly more often with psychiatric symptoms. Psychiatric morbidity was found to be more frequent in the patients staying in slum than in those in the 'ashram' where they had some security.