Psychiatric morbidity among adult patients in a semi-urban primary care setting in Malaysia.
BACKGROUND
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 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).


METHODS
This 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.


RESULTS
The 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.


CONCLUSIONS
These 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.
ZamZam
Ruzanna
R
Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur 56000, Malaysia.
Thambu
Maniam
M
Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur 56000, Malaysia.
Midin
Marhani
M
Department of Psychiatry, Faculty of Medicine, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur 56000, Malaysia.
Omar
Khairani
K
Department of Family Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur 56000, Malaysia.
Kaur
Pervesh
P
Department of Family Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur 56000, Malaysia.