Psychiatric morbidity in general practice and the community

Abstract

SynopsisThe ‘General Health Questionnaire’ was used to assess the psychiatric morbidity among 365 consecutive attenders at a general practice and to compare this with a systematic random sample of 213 patients drawn from the lists of the same practice. Those attending a general practitioner are shown to be more psychiatrically disturbed than a random sample of the practice population, and this difference remains when those attending for psychological symptoms are discounted. Various social and demographic characteristics which distinguish between those who do and those who do not attend a doctor with a given set of psychological symptoms are described.

Prevalence of Mental Disorders and Profile of Disablement among Primary Health Care Service Users in Lagos Island

“…This suggests the impact of psychosis on its sufferers in nonclinical population, in this instance primary care setting where the primary reason for service use is for general medical conditions. The present study found certain sociodemographic correlates of psychiatric morbidity somewhat different from previous ones that found female gender, being unemployed, and being separated or divorced to be associated with a higher prevalence of psychiatric disorder [1,2,4]. The present study identified only young age, male gender, and being divorced to be associated with psychiatric morbidity.…”

“…The majority of individuals with psychiatric morbidity in the community are usually seen at the primary care level [1][2][3][4][5], with prevalence rates ranging from 16 to 43% of general practice users [1,[6][7][8].…”

A Comparison of Levels of Burden in Indian and White Parents With a Son or Daughter With Schizophrenia

“…Indeed the proportion of White parents reporting distress in this study was just above that reported for community samples (Goldberg et al, 1976). These low levels of distress suggest that the burden levels we recorded are accurate and not an underestimation due to small sample sizes.…”

Disease activity and emotional state in multiple sclerosis

“…It has been shown to be a sensitive, specific, and valid indicator of emotional disturbance in the MS patient population [ l 71. Its reliability has been established in general medical patients [7,8,10, 141 and in patients with a variety of neurological illnesses E5, 61. The 28-item version of the GHQ has subscales that measure disturbances in the areas of somatic complaints, anxiety, social dysfunction, and depression [9].…”

“…Brown and Davis [l} reported "mental alterations" in 90% of cases and considered euphoria to be present in 71% (10) Most of the studies cited to this point conducted observations at the time of clinic visits or hospital admissions, situations in which the proportion of patients with active exacerbation or progression of disease is potentially inflated. Surridge's study [19} is an exception.…”