A Study of One Hundred Chronic Psychiatric Patients Identified in General Practice

Abstract

It has long been recognized as a shortcoming of much of the psychiatric literature that it is based on the study of highly selected case-material, drawn from hospital and private consultant practice. This criticism, which has important implications for the interpretation of hospital statistics (Cooper, 1965), may be of equal relevance in the field of clinical description. Studies undertaken in general practice (Shepherdet al.,1959; Ryle, 1959) point to the existence in the community of large numbers of cases of minor psychiatric disturbance of a kind which is clinically identifiable, but which for the most part does not come under the scrutiny of trained psychiatrists. Whether such cases conform to the standard text-book descriptions of psychiatric illness, or can be incorporated into the existing nosology, is very much open to question. There seems little doubt that clinical studies in general practice are of great potential value in the study of mental disorder, and in particular that they may help to throw new light on the natural history of this group of affections.