Preliminary Psychiatric Observations in Egypt

Abstract

In the following paper a short clinical, descriptive account is given of the first 1,000 patients attending Ain Shams University Psychiatric Clinic from the beginning of 1966. Although the clinic is in the centre of Cairo, its catchment area extends all over Egypt. Patients are referred through three channels; either general practitioners send them for a psychiatric opinion or they come from other medical out-patient clinics at the University. The third group represents those who come independently and ask for psychiatric examination. Usually these are patients from the countryside who have tried lay therapy in their villages but without improvement. This group represents a deficit in the organization of referral, as many of them, having been examined at the psychiatric clinic may have to be referred to another medical out-patient clinic because of a non-psychiatric organic pathology.