Geriatric Out-Patients with Psychiatric Illnesses in A Teaching hospital setting - A Retrospective Study

The number of geropsychiatric outpatients is on an increase in North India.Such patients visit many clinics for treatment of their problems. Not much research has been done in this part of the country in assessing the clinical profiles of such patients. As such the present study was undertaken to assess the sociodemographic characteristics and the pattern of psychiatric and physical disorders in the elderly outpatients. A single institutional retrospective study of 3 years was designed. Data was collected year wise and reconfirmation of diagnoses was done using ICD-10 criteria. A total of 181 completed case records of elderly outpatients aged 60 years and over were included in this study. The case records had a printed, semi-structured format; complete and reliable information was available in all the records.Data obtained was analysed using frequency distribution. Results showed that Mood disorders(48.07%), Neurotic, stress-related and somatoform disorders (15.47%) and Organic,including symptomatic, mental disorders (14.36%) were the most common psychiatric disorders in these patients. Medical comorbidity was a significant finding of this study as physical diagnosis was present in most of these patients (56.35%). Conclusion on the results reaffirm that there is a high prevalence of Mood disorders and Neurotic, stress-related and somatoform disorders in elderly outpatients. Adequate measures to detect these psychiatric disorders and medical comorbidity in elderly outpatients by specialized geropsychiatric services are needed. Planning of mental health services for the aged is the demand of the current scenario in our country.