Abstract
BackgroundScreening for psychiatric disorders in primary care can improve the detection rate and helps in preventing grave consequences of unrecognised and untreated psychiatric morbidity. This is relevant to the Malaysian setting where mental health care is now also being provided at primary care level. The aim of this paper is to report the prevalence of psychiatric illness in a semi-urban primary care setting in Malaysia using the screening tool Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ).MethodsThis is a cross-sectional study carried out in a semi-urban primary healthcare centre located south of Kuala Lumpur. Systematic random sampling was carried out and a total of 267 subjects completed the PHQ during the study period.ResultsThe proportion of respondents who had at least one PHQ positive diagnosis was 24.7% and some respondents had more than one diagnosis. Diagnoses included depressive illness (n = 38, 14.4%), somatoform disorder (n = 32, 12.2%), panic and anxiety disorders (n = 17, 6.5%), binge eating disorder (n = 9, 3.4%) and alcohol abuse (n = 6, 2.3%). Younger age (18 to 29 years) and having a history of stressors in the previous four weeks were found to be significantly associated (p = 0.036 and p = 0.044 respectively) with PHQ positive scores.ConclusionThese findings are broadly similar to the findings of studies done in other countries and are a useful guide to the probable prevalence of psychiatric morbidity in primary care in other similar settings in Malaysia.
Highlights
Most of the psychiatric morbidity in the community is seen at the primary care level [1,2,3,4,5]
In a Malaysian primary health setting the prevalence of psychiatric morbidity using General HealthQuestionnaire (GHQ)-30 item version was 26.7% [9]
The aim of this paper is to report the prevalence of psychiatric disorder in a semiurban primary care setting using the Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ)
Summary
Most of the psychiatric morbidity in the community is seen at the primary care level [1,2,3,4,5]. A number of reasons have been adduced for this Patients seeing their primary care doctors tend to somatize their emotional distress, presenting with physical symptoms rather than overt psychological symptoms [13]. Screening for psychiatric disorders in primary care can improve the detection rate and helps in preventing grave consequences of unrecognised and untreated psychiatric morbidity. This is relevant to the Malaysian setting where mental health care is being provided at primary care level. The aim of this paper is to report the prevalence of psychiatric illness in a semiurban primary care setting in Malaysia using the screening tool Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ)
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