Identification of psychosomatic and psychic disorders in non-psychiatric in-patients

Abstract

In 322 in-patients from 5 different departments of the hospital of the Hannover Medical School the occurrence and characteristics of psychic disorders were studied. Patients were surveyed on 11 separate wards (medicine: 3; surgery: 2; neurology: 2; ear, nose and throat: 2; orthopaedics: 2). These patients represented about 78% of the actual population of the wards during a 3-week period. There was a selection bias because severely ill and patients older than 65 years were not surveyed. The screening was done by means of 6 self-report scales which were answered on 2 consecutive days. On the basis of conservative cut-off scores the amount of depressive disorders was estimated, within 5% confidential limits, between 16.1 and 24.9% of the patients of the total sample. Regarding the factor of social anxiety we found 20.7-30.3% of patients with this kind of disturbance. 9.3% of the patients scored high on both kinds of symptoms. So we had a total of 31.4-42.0% of patients with depressive or/and social anxiety disorders which should be treated by psychological means. In addition, all these measures varied for the patients in the 5 departments with the maximum of 49.2% in medicine and the minimum of about 32% in surgery and ear, nose and throat. These results offer a meaningful empirical basis for establishing different concepts of cooperation in the field of consultation-liaison activities. They are discussed with regard to the consequences for psychotherapeutic patient care in non-psychiatric hospital wards.