Study of psychiatric disturbance in patients with multiple complaints and repeated consultations

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the hypothesis of patients presenting with multiple symptoms not in keeping with a known oraganic illness and/or repeated consultations, either to the same or to a seperate medical practitioner are likely to have an underlying psychological / psychiatric disturbance contributing to the consultation.Two important indicators of underlying psychiatric disturbance were revealed.They are multiple complaints and repeated consultations. These indicators could be of immense value in the detection of psychiatric disturbance.The primary care schedule validated in this study could be used in primary care settings for the detection of psychiatric disturbances.