Estudio sobre la prevalencia de síntomas psiquiátricos en el partido bonaerense de Patagones. / [Prevalence of psychiatric symptoms in the Patagones district of Buenos Aires Province]

ABSTRACT

The survey was carried out in 1979 in Carmen de Patagones, is the first of a number of studies planned as a part of the National Program of Psychiatric Epidemiology. Patagones is the southern and largest county of the province of Buenos Aires (area 13.431,93 sq.km;population 21.121) Economically the population can be characterized as a well-off rural one, with farming and cows rearing as the main sources of income. For case-finding we used the full ninth version of the Present State Examination. It has been translated into a dozen languages and it was used by the WHO in the International Pilot Study of Schizophrenia. One hundred and thirty house units were drawn at random from the registers of the city of Carmen de Patagones. Each house was visited by trained interviewers form the Research Team, and adults (aged 17 to 60) were asked if they would be willing to participate in the survey of health problems in the area. Frequency of positive responses obtained for each syndrome is presented in Table I. All the data were subjected to statistical analysis and levels of significance were got.