Psychological Symptoms in Gastrointestinal Outpatients

This study was designed to determine the prevalence of psychological symptoms in gastrointestinal outpatients. In this research 200 outpatients of a private internal clinic and Sina Gastroenterology Clinic in the city of Tabriz were selected by convenience sampling, and assessed through SCL-90-R. Data were analyzed using c2 test. 51.5% of the subjects had psychological symptoms among which depression and somatization were the most prevalent. Pre-valence of symptoms was four times more in females than in males. Women and unemployed subjects scored higher in most scales of the test than men, with significant difference in somatization and anxiety scales (p<0.05). No significant relationship was found between psy-chological symptoms and any gastrointestinal disease. Psychological symptoms are prevalent among gastro-intestinal patients, especially females.