Psychiatrists' and psychologists' practice patterns: different profiles in a Spanish clinical sample.

Important differences in clinical practice exist between psychiatrists and psychologists. However, there is scarce information on the characteristics of patients receiving treatment from these two groups of professionals. We examined the diagnoses assigned to the patients who received treatment from psychiatrists and psychologists in outpatient settings of Madrid, Spain, from 1980 to 2008. The psychologists were more likely to see anxiety-related disorders, whereas the psychiatrists tended to see disorders with a more prominent biological underpinning, such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. The profile of the patients seen by the psychologists is different from that of the psychiatrists. Disorders whose development is more related to distress were usually treated by the psychologists, whereas disorders with a more prominent biological underpinning were usually treated by the psychiatrists. In addition, the dramatic increase in the diagnosis of adjustment disorder might be related to the increasing "psychologization" and "medicalization" of the difficulties of everyday life.

Differences in maternal and paternal age between schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders.

Advanced parental age has been shown to increase offspring risk for a number of neuropsychiatric disorders including schizophrenia and Down's syndrome. Other psychiatric disorders have been less studied with respect to the effect of parental age on offspring risk. In this study we examine if advanced parental age increased risk for ICD-10 diagnoses. We hypothesized that advanced parental age would increase risk for offspring psychotic disorders and mental retardation but not other ICD-10 diagnoses. We examined follow-up data for 30,965 subjects treated in outpatient psychiatric facilities between 1980 and 2007. Subjects were younger than 18 years of age at their first outpatient visit. A comparison group was obtained from data on registered births in Spain from 1975. We compared parental age (maternal, paternal, combined) across diagnostic categories using ANOVA and logistic regression was used to estimate the risk of psychopathology in the offspring with advanced parental age (maternal, paternal, combined). Maternal and paternal ages were higher for subjects diagnosed with mental retardation. Risk for psychotic disorders showed a significant linear increase only with advancing maternal age, and not paternal age as is more often reported.