Physical Health and Illness in a Psychiatric Outpatient Department Population

Abstract

The physical assessment by psychiatric teams of one hundred consecutive patients in the adult psychiatric outpatient department revealed: 1) That half these patients were suffering from some kind of significant physical illness. 2) That two-thirds of the physically ill were not sufficiently diagnosed and that half were not diagnosed at all before referral to psychiatry. 3) That the efficiency in diagnosing physical illnesses was poor among both general and psychiatric practitioners. 4) That the medical supervision of patients with organic illnesses treated for psychiatric disturbance by allied health professionals and parapsychiatric personnel was insufficient. 5) That in many instances the unsuspected physical illness was the exclusive cause of the patient's emotional condition. 6) That psychiatric referral is frequently a chance occurrence — those who were physically ill were often characterized in this sample by less education and lower intelligence, were older, predominantly female and had inadequate personalities or passive-aggressive personality disorders. 7) That physical illnesses were often masked by the patient's manner of presenting his complaints and further ‘involuntarily’ disguised by the referring source.