Psychological disturbance in a general practice setting.

One hundred consecutive patients who consulted a general practitioner in Sydney with a new complaint completed the General Health Questionnaire (GHQ), a self-administered instrument designed to assess psychological dysfunction. Although all patients presented somatic symptoms as their principal complaint, 39 per cent scored positively on the GHQ. A direct relationship between severity of psychological disturbance as clinically assessed and GHQ score was observed, while the relationship between the clinically assessed severity of physical dysfunction and GHQ score was an inverse one. At the 10 week follow-up, psychological morbidity had fallen to 23 per cent, a figure akin to a Sydney general population norm. Some implications of these findings are discussed.