With respect to statistics on out patients with senile psychiatric disorders, a few reports have thus far been made available by university hospitals in major urban areas but none from any rural general hospitals. This study is an attempt to grasp the real status of senile psychiatric disorders as observed in outpatient clinics.
1) There have been signs for a yearly rise in the prevalence rate of senile psychiatric diseases, and there is the possibility of diagnosing new patients at a rate of one to six aged people (60 years of age and over).
2) Of all the patients, 45% came directly to our hospital, whereas 55% either were referrals from other clinics or came to the hospital after their consultation with other clinics. Of the latter group, 55% were referred by other departments of the hospital, 38% by outside physicians in our district, and 7% by local administrative offices. This finding appears to suggest that the incidence of hypertension and other somatic complications is high among aged people and also that phsychiatric disorders may sometimes manifest due to somatic disorders.
3) A check of the prevalence by month reveals that the prevalence is highest in March, high from spring to summer, lowest in autumn and low in winter. In this respect, there exists a difference between the organic diseases and the functional diseases. In the former group, the prevalence is concentrated in spring and summer, whereas in the latter, the prevalence remains high from spring to early summer, low in summer and transiently becomes high in early autumn.
4) By sex, the prevalence rate is 52% for males and 48% for females. By age, the prevalence decreases with age and takes a sharp downturn after the age of 75.
By type of disease, senile organic diseases (Group A) account for 54.4%, functional diseases (Group B) 40.0%, and other organic diseases (Group C) 14.5%. Group A increases with age among males, whereas it is concentratedly high among males of 75 years of age and over. Group C is significantly greater among males.
5) A check of the trend of each disease group in the past 15 years indicates that there have been signs for a rise for each group but the rises are significant particularly for Groups B and C. In the latter half period, the percentage of Group B is greater than that of Group A. Against this background, there seems to be a rise in the incidence of psychiatric diseases among rural females.
6) The hospitalization rate stood at 17.5%. By sex, the rate was 20% for males and 15% for females. By type of disease, the ratio stood at 21% for Group C, 17% for Group A and 16% for Group B.
By place of residence, differences between the towns and the villages (27% for the towns and 9% for the villages) were observed in Group A of females, suggesting that many females in the towns are placed in the circumstances where difficult problems tend to crop up with respect to their matrimony or their sharing the same house with other members of their families. As regards clinical symptoms, it was found that there are many patients with severe auxiliary symptoms, such as delirium, hallucination and paranoid symptoms, in addition to advanced dementia.