Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2009 Dec;119(1-3):52-8.
doi: 10.1016/j.jad.2009.03.014. Epub 2009 Apr 10.

Prevalence and comorbidity of common mental disorders in primary care

M Roca  1 , M Gili, M Garcia-Garcia, J Salva, M Vives, J Garcia Campayo, A Comas
Affiliations

Prevalence and comorbidity of common mental disorders in primary care

M Roca et al. J Affect Disord. 2009 Dec.

Abstract

Objective: To estimate the prevalence and comorbidity of the most common mental disorders in primary care practice in Spain, using the Primary Care Evaluation of Mental Disorders (PRIME-MD) questionnaire.

Design: A systematic sample of 7936 adult primary care patients was recruited by 1925 general practitioners in a large cross-sectional national epidemiological study. The PRIME-MD was used to diagnose psychiatric disorders.

Setting: 1356 primary care units proportionally distributed throughout the country.

Results: 53.6% of the sample presented one or more psychiatric disorder. The most prevalent were affective (35.8%), anxiety (25.6%), and somatoform (28.8%) disorders. 30.3% of the patients had more than one current mental disorder. 11.5% presented comorbidity between affective, anxiety, and somatoform disorders.

Conclusions: The study provides further evidence of the high prevalence and high comorbidity of mental disorders in primary care. Given the large overlap between affective, anxiety and somatoform disorders, future diagnostic classifications should reconsider the current separation between these entities.

PubMed Disclaimer