Non-specific symptoms and screening of non-psychotic morbidity in primary care

Much of the non-psychotic mental morbidity in primary care goes undetected by the primary care health personnel. This is often because of the non-specific somatic nature of the presenting complaints of these patients and the difficulty on the part of the primary care physician to elicit specific emotional symptoms to screen psychiatric problems. This paper describes the development of the 7-item Primary care Psychiatric Questionnaire (PPQ.) which, by requiring to elicit only the non-specific symptoms, could overcome this practical difficulty. This new screening method has been standardised against the Self Report Questionaaire-20-item version which is commonly used in primary care.