[Psychiatric disorders leading to noncompliance in a consultative psychiatric practice]

Noncompliance is a complex problem which can appear in each phase of the medical treatment. Lack of cooperation can cause difficulties in the examinations, during the invasive interventions following the diagnostic process, and also in the pharmacological treatment. Among the reasons leading to noncompliance, psychiatric disorders concomitant with somatic disturbances play a major role.

To study the most common psychiatric disorders leading to noncooperative behavior through the examination of those cases, in which the reason of the psychiatric consultation was noncompliance.

The documentation of a five years period's consultations was retrospectively studied in the Consultation-Liaison Psychiatric Service of Szt. László Hospital. In this publication we discuss those consultations which were requested because of noncompliance.

Dementia (27.3%) and affective disorders (40.9%) were most commonly diagnosed in noncompliance patients. Diabetes, pulmonary and renal failures were more frequent in noncompliance patients than in the whole consulted patient group.

As comorbid depression is appearing more frequently in chronically ill patients, and because noncompliance is more frequent in depressed individuals, screening of depression in patients with diabetes, pulmonary and renal failure is a good chance in the prevention of noncompliance.