The Prevalence of Psychiatric Illness in a Medical Out-Patient Clinic

THE actual prevalence of psychiatric illness in the general population has never been accurately determined. This is a pressing problem that must be faced by the psychiatrist and the public-health official. Of more pertinent importance to the medical practitioner is the prevalence of psychiatric symptoms among the patients seeking help in the physician's office or the out-patient department of the general hospital. Previous studies of the prevalence of mental disease in general hospitals have not dealt with the medical out-patient department.1 2 3 This department has a special importance in that it is here that the patient's total medical state is surveyed, . . .