ARE FREQUENT ATTENDERS OF PRIMARY HEALTH-CARE DISTRESSED

Objective - To measure the level of distress among frequent attenders of primary health care. Design - A cross-sectional study. Setting - Two public primary health care stations in Turku, south-western Finland Participants - 96 frequent attenders (eleven or more visits to a physician during the previous 12 months) and 466 control patients. Main outcome measure - SCL-25, GP evaluations, self-reported symptoms and self-experienced need for care. Results - Frequent attenders were significantly more distressed than other patients in primary care. However, their self-experienced need for psychiatric care was very low and it did not differ from other patients self-experienced need. The GPs estimated that over 1/3 of frequent attenders suffered from mixed (physical and psychiatric) illnesses and over 1/2 from subclinical or clinical psychiatric symptoms. The corresponding proportions for other patients were significantly lower.