Abstract

Objectives: This project was conducted to appraise the comorbidity of psychiatric disorders in a psychiatric outpatient clinic.

Method: This was a descriptive-retrospective study. Out of 4000 patients of Tehran Psychiatric Institute’s Clinic during the years of 1996-2000, a total of 648 cases diagnosed based on DSM-IV criteria were selected systematic randomly. The cases were further evaluated via a demographic questionnaire. Data were analyzed by descriptive-statistical methods.

Findings: 35.6% of patients had the comorbidity of psychiatric disorders.The diagnoses of simul- taneous disorders on axis I, according to diagnostic categories,included mood and anxiety disorders (34.6%) and mood and substance-related disorders (6.9%). The comorbidities according to disorders within each of diagnostic categories included major depressive and obsessive-compulsive disorders (16.0%), major depressive and dysthymic disorders (7.8%), dysthymic and obsessive-compulsive disorders (5.6%), and finally obsessive-compulsive disorder and social phobia (3.9%). The diag-nosis of simultaneous disorders on axis II, according to clusters A, B, and C,  included A and C (0.4%). The particular comorbidities according to disorders within each of the clusters A, B, or C included histrionic with borderline (0.9%) and paranoid with obsessive-compulsive (0.4%). The simultaneous diagnoses on axis I and II included mood disorders with personality disorders in general (7.8%) and mood disorders with cluster B  of personality disorders in particular (14.7%), anxiety disorder with personality disorders in general (12.6%)  and anxiety disorder with cluster C of per-sonality disorders in particular (8.7%),major depressive disorder with cluster B of personality dis- orders (4.3%), and finally obsessive-compulsive disorder with cluster C of personality disorders (3.9%).

Result: The level of comorbidity detected in this project is less than other studies.