Commonly Diagnosed Mental Disorders in a General Hospital System
Abstract Background: Considering many patients seek care from general hospitals, these healthcare institutions are uniquely situated to address comorbid mental and physical health needs. Little is documented, however, on the most common mental disorders in patients seeking care in general hospital settings, especially in Puerto Rico. The objective of this study was to characterize the five most common DSM-5 mental disorder diagnoses made in a hospital system in southern Puerto Rico between January 2015 and December 2019. Methods: A retrospective study of cross-sectional data obtained from 5,494 inpatients was implemented and a multinomial logistic regression was used to assess the odds of being diagnosed with a current mental disorder.Results: Overall, 53% of the entire sample was diagnosed with a mental disorder during hospitalization. Major depressive, neurocognitive, anxiety, substance-related and schizophrenia-spectrum disorders were the most frequently diagnosed. Interestingly, females were 23% less likely to have been diagnosed with major depressive disorder than males (aOR: .769, CI [.650, .909], p = .002). Thus, males evidenced 1.30 higher odds of being diagnosed with depression. Conclusion: The integration of clinical health psychology services within a general hospital facilitated our team’s work of identifying and treating co-occurring mental disorders among hospitalized patients. Future studies examining the opportunities and barriers of integrating clinical health psychology services within a general hospital’s administrative and clinical infrastructure for rapid identification and treatment of co-occurring mental disorders among medical patients are warranted.