The results of this preliminary study suggest that chronic psychiatric patients upon returning to the community do not pose a burden to physicians. This would appear to apply for at least a two-year period. In the present sample of 211 patients those relatively few exceptions tended to be individuals who developed illnesses requiring either surgical intervention or hospitalization for a major medical condition. One question that arises from the low utilization observed in the present study involves the adequacy of follow-up medical care received by these patients. This area poses problems for future investigation involving clinical work in the field.

This project examined the relationship between three measures of psychiatric morbidity and the utilization of insured health services. The criteria used to define psychiatric morbidity were as follows: • Self-ratings on the Cornell Medical Index of a randomly selected sample of the population. • Medical care insurance diagnosis of psychiatric illness by the community's physicians. • Psychiatric diagnosis by a psychiatrist. In all instances psychiatric morbidity was related to ‘high utilization’ of insured services, using dollar expense as the criteria. The significance of this is discussed.