Frequent attender profiles: Different clinical subgroups among frequent attender patients in primary care

1997

Psychiatric and physical morbidity among frequently attending patients in primary care is high. However, very few efforts have been made to sort out the complex patterns of problems these patients have. We developed a clinical grouping of these patients. Our sample consisted of 67 frequent attenders. The measures included physical and psychiatric illnesses, presenting symptoms, sociodemographic data, psychosocial situation, level of distress, global functioning, experienced life satisfaction, illness attribution, and current psychiatric treatment. We identified five groups with different profiles: (1) patients with entirely physical illnesses; (2) patients with clear psychiatric illnesses; …