Assessing emotional distress at the internist's office

Abstract At their first visits to a clinic, 102 outpatients rated the severity of their presenting complaint, of 12 possible body problems including 6 nonspecific symptoms, of a set of adjustment difficulties, and answered the Welsh A and the Beck Depression inventories. Then, an internist ‘blind’ to the foregoing answers performed a routine history and physical exam, afterward rating the patient for degree of organic and of psychosomatic involvement. Significant correlations were found between clinican judgments of psychosomatic involvement and patients' self-reported complaints on all assessment measures (smallest r = 0.25, P r = 0.73).