[Organic morbidity of a hospitalized psychiatric population]

In order to determine organic morbidity in psychiatry, 140 psychiatric inpatients (aged between 20 and 49) were examined. After various investigations (physical, biological, chest film, EEG, ECG), it was concluded that 52% of the patients suffer from at least one physical disease, and 23% suffer from more than one. The most frequent diseases are digestive (hepatic), respiratory and cardiovascular. The relationship between opiate addiction and stomatological, urogenital and dermatological diseases, and between alcoholism and liver diseases seems clear. It would appear that a medical approach adapted to psychiatric patients is necessary in order better to diagnose these physical diseases, and to reduce psychiatric overmorbidity, which might lead to a decrease in psychiatric excess mortality.