The proposed research is concerned with psychiatric disorders in primary care (family practice). Its specific focus is on the depressive disorders, the most frequently occuring disorders seen in primary care. A major objective is to determine the prevalence of specific depressive disorders, RDC categories, in a primary care practice and, for each depressive disorder, to obtain systematic clinical outcome data over a two-year period. The research design is a longitudinal study with assessment of subjects every six months for a two-year period. In effect the study has two phases. The first, the screening phase, is an epidemiologic study in which prevalence rates for specific disorders are determined and a self-report screening instrument, the SCL, is compared to a standardized psychiatric interview, the SADS, for its ability to detect out-patient psychiatric disorders. It is also a cross-sectional study which obtains psychiatric diagnostic and symptom data simultaneously with demographic and medical data, permitting the examination of relationships between these variables. The second phase is a clinical study, a naturalistic follow-up of specific RDC depressive disorders to obtain clinical outcome data relevant to health planning and evaluation. This outcome data includes utilization of health services, functional status, medical symptoms, psychiatric symptoms and treatments received. The major goals of the study are to develop and improve identification techniques for psychiatric disorders which present in primary care, and to determine, for each of the individual depressive disorders identified, the effect of having the disorder both on the patient and on the health care system.
| Oxman, T E; Barrett, J E; Barrett, J et al. (1990) Symptomatology of late-life minor depression among primary care patients. Psychosomatics 31:174-80 |
| Barrett, J E; Barrett, J A; Oxman, T E et al. (1988) The prevalence of psychiatric disorders in a primary care practice. Arch Gen Psychiatry 45:1100-6 |
| Barrett, J; Oxman, T; Gerber, P (1987) Prevalence of depression and its correlates in a general medical practice. J Affect Disord 12:167-74 |
| Oxman, T E; Barrett, J E; Barrett, J et al. (1987) Psychiatric symptoms in the elderly in a primary care practice. Gen Hosp Psychiatry 9:167-73 |
