Psychiatric referrals. In primary care and general hospitals in Qassim Region, Saudi Arabia

OBJECTIVE: From different perspectives, psychiatric symptoms have special significance in psychiatry. This study comparatively describes the psychopathological symptoms as noted in primary care (402) and general hospital (138) referrals.

METHODS: Five hundred and forty psychiatric referrals, retrieved randomly, were reviewed extensively for collecting relevant data.

RESULTS: Both hospital and primary care referrals were observed to have a variety of psychological and somatic symptoms of variable frequencies, which were suggestive of several psychopathological domains. Functional psychotic (19.5% versus 10%), mood (27.5% versus 23%) and psychosomatic (7% versus 2%) symptoms were significantly noted in hospital referrals as compared to primary care referrals while the later were observed to have significantly more somatic (34.5% versus 22.5%) and neurological (8% versus 4%) symptoms. Only a small proportion of primary care referrals (33/402, 8%] have symptoms of childhood psychiatric disorders.

CONCLUSION: Psychiatric symptomatology differs in primary care and general hospital referrals. Both the general practitioners and clinicians are expected to record psychiatric symptoms in a comprehensive manner. Hence, they need condensed training courses on psychiatric symptomatology.