[Prevalence of mental disorders and risk factors in a population of a general medical practice].

The present paper reports the most relevant results from an epidemiologic survey that was carried out in a hospital's general practice service in Mexico. The survey comprises several issues such-as: the validity and standardization of the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ), a screening instrument, designed for the early detection of mental disorders, which is validated against the clinical criteria expressed through the Standardized Psychiatric Interview (SPI), the prevalence of psychiatric disorders which includes type of syndromes and affected subgroups, the relation between the ratings of the SPI and the scales of the GHQ (somatic symptoms, sleep disturbances, social disfunction and severe depression) with demographic variables. From the population attending the service during a period of 5 weeks, a total of 619 patients, to whom the GHQ was administered, were randomly selected. From this sample 364 patients were separately interviewed by means of the SPI. No significant differences were found between the sample and the population regarding age, sex, and educational level. The prevalence of mental disorders obtained for the mixed population was of 34%, being of 26% for men and of 36% for women. The only risk factor found for both populations was the low educational level of the head of the family. In the multiple regression analysis, significant differences were found among some groups in spite of the low predictive power of the studied variables.