[Psychiatric morbidity of patients hospitalized at the internal medicine ward]

Report on two studies to investigate psychiatric morbidity in patients hospitalized in an internal medicine ward of a distric general hospital. In the first charts of 783 patients hospitalized in 1975 were evaluated retrospectively, while the second study (conducted in 1976) involved clinical assessment by the author of 244 newly admitted patients. A psychiatric diagnosis could be established in some 70% of all patients hospitalized in the internal medicine ward, and the morbidity rate in patients for whom therapy was indicated was 40%. Investigation of the medication utilized on the ward revealed that psychopharmacologic agents (chiefly given as hypnotics) were the most frequently prescribed group of drugs, whereas they were administered to 25% of patients on a regular basis (without indication as hypnotics). These high figures emphasize the need to decentralize psychiatric services and to intergrate psychiatry into internal medicine.