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The relationship between chief complaints, psychological distress, and suicidal ideation in 15-24-year-old patients
R S McKelvey1, J J Pfaff, J G Acres
1Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, OHSU, Portland, Oregon, USA.
Objectives:
To determine the prevalence of psychological distress and suicidal ideation among patients aged 15-24 years presenting to general practitioners, and the relationship between these variables and patients' chief complaints.
Design And Setting:
Questionnaire survey of young people presenting to Australian general practitioners between 1996 and 1998.
Participants:
247 general practitioners who volunteered to participate in a nationwide project aimed at teaching general practitioners to identify and treat suicidal youth; 3242 consecutive 15-24-year-old patients presenting to participating general practitioners during a specified six-week period.
Main Outcome Measures:
Patients completed three self-administered questionnaires: the General Health Questionnaire-12, the Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression Scale, and the Depressive Symptom Inventory-Suicidality Subscale. Patients' chief complaints were obtained from summary sheets completed by their general practitioners.
Results:
While only 12% of patients presented with psychological complaints, about 50% percent had clinically significant levels of psychological distress and 22% had clinically significant levels of suicidal ideation.
Conclusions:
Despite presenting with primarily medical complaints, almost half of young people presenting to primary care physicians had high levels of psychological distress and almost a quarter had high levels of suicidal ideation.