Study: Most psych cases involve multiple issues

PROVIDENCE – A new Rhode Island Hospital study published in the February edition of the journal Psychological Medicine has found that most psychiatric patients have more than one diagnosis, especially those with bipolar disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.
The study, based on data from 2,300 psychiatric outpatients, found an average of 1.9 current diagnoses per patient, with more than one-third of patients having at least three disorders.
The study found the most common disorder was depression, present in nearly half the patients and generally the main reason for seeking treatment. Social phobia was No. 2, present in about 25 percent, but of 95 percent of them first sought help for something else.
Lead author Dr. Mark Zimmerman, director of outpatient psychiatry at Rhode Island Hospital and associate professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University’s Alpert Medical School, and fellow researchers Joseph B. McGlinchey, Iwona Chelminski and Diane Young said the study indicates that clinicians should presume patients will likely have more than one problem, and it also highlights the need to do research on people with multiple conditions. Most treatment studies exclude patients with multiple disorders. (READ MORE)

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