[Social assessment of anxiety in primary health care]

Identification of the social profile of our anxious patients, and analysis of the usefulness of Bell's questionnaire for our area of work.

A retrospective observation study of a crossover type.

Primary Care.

55 patients who consulted their Family Doctor and were diagnosed as suffering from Anxiety.

We confirmed the diagnosis with the DSM-III-R and then analysed the level of Anxiety with the Hamilton Scale. The social evaluation was done by means of Bell's profile. As test statistics we used the lineal correlation Coefficient, the Student's t and Xi2 tests and Variance Analysis. 65% of diagnoses were Generalised Anxiety. The Hamilton mean was 20.9 points (S = 9.2). Overall social adaptation was unsatisfactory, with the worst results being for the emotional aspects. We observed a higher level of Anxiety as age increased (p = 0.021), related to a worse adaptation to Health (p = 0.014). Dissatisfaction with work and the working environment took the form of professional adaptation being poorer as their work situation deteriorated (p = 0.006). Anxiety levels were higher among the unemployed. Social adaptation was less among people with higher Anxiety levels (p = 0.04), above all as a consequence of worse adaptation to Health (p = 0.002) and worse emotional (p = 0.00001) adaptation.

1) We must introduce social aspects into analysis of patients with Anxiety. 2) Bell's profile enables us to identify those social aspects which can be tackled when caring for our patients. Its fundamental use is in individual application.