Behçet disease

Page most recently updated 7 September 2026

This page focuses on the reported psychiatric associations, which may be the initial presenting manifestation, and on other clinical features that may assist the psychiatrist or primary care physician in identifying the underlying diagnosis, considered through the lenses of the diagnostic lenses framework.

Behçet disease is a systemic vasculitis.

It can present with psychiatric features such as depression, anxiety, mood disturbance, cognitive dysfunction, behavioural change, and, less commonly, psychosis.

Other characteristic features include neurological involvement such as headache, meningoencephalitis, brainstem syndromes, cognitive impairment, seizures, cranial neuropathies, and cerebrovascular events. Distinctive features include recurrent oral aphthous ulcers, genital ulcers, uveitis and retinal vasculitis causing visual symptoms, skin lesions, and systemic vasculitic manifestations affecting arteries and veins of varying sizes.

From a multisystemic lens perspective, clinical features in other body systems include (but are not limited to):

  • Cardiovascular: vascular inflammation affecting arteries and veins may cause deep vein thrombosis, thrombophlebitis, arterial aneurysms, and arterial occlusive disease.

  • Respiratory: pulmonary artery aneurysms and pulmonary vascular involvement may occur.

  • Gastrointestinal: gastrointestinal ulceration and inflammatory bowel-like manifestations may occur, particularly involving the ileocecal region.

  • Musculoskeletal: arthralgia and non-erosive inflammatory arthritis may occur.

  • Dermatologic: erythema nodosum-like lesions, acneiform lesions, papulopustular eruptions, and pathergy phenomenon (skin injury triggering inflammatory lesions) are characteristic.

Early diagnosis is important to enable prompt immunomodulatory treatment, prevent irreversible organ damage (particularly neurological, ocular, and vascular complications), reduce the risk of vision loss and major vascular events, and improve long-term prognosis and quality of life.

Selected references and further reading — Multisystemic lens

Cardinal RN, Bullmore ET. The diagnosis of psychosis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2011.

Sachdev PS, Keshavan MS, editors. Secondary schizophrenia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 2010.

Levenson JL, editor. The American Psychiatric Association Publishing textbook of psychosomatic medicine and consultation-liaison psychiatry. 3rd ed. Washington (DC): American Psychiatric Association Publishing; 2019.

Stern TA, Beach SR, Smith FA, Freudenreich O, Vranceau AM, Fava M, editors. Massachusetts General Hospital handbook of general hospital psychiatry. 8th ed. Philadelphia: Elsevier; 2025.

Arciniegas DB, Yudofsky SC, Hales RE, editors. The American Psychiatric Association Publishing textbook of neuropsychiatry and clinical neurosciences. 6th ed. Washington (DC): American Psychiatric Association Publishing; 2018.

Agrawal N, Faruqui R, Bodani M, editors. Oxford textbook of neuropsychiatry. Oxford: Oxford University Press; 2020.

Boland R, Verduin M, editors. Kaplan and Sadock's comprehensive textbook of psychiatry. 11th ed. Philadelphia: Wolters Kluwer; 2024.

Loscalzo J, Fauci AS, Kasper DL, Hauser SL, Longo DL, Jameson JL, editors. Harrison's principles of internal medicine. 22nd ed. New York: McGraw Hill; 2025.