A computer that can diagnose common psychiatric disorders could be a useful aid for busy physicians and make screening more common mental disorders. And for some disorders, patients seem more willing to confide in telephony based system than in their personal physicians, according to a study in tomorrow's issue of Journal of the American Medical Association .
With medical examinations for 10 minutes or less, many primary care physicians do not have time to ask questions that can help diagnose mental illness - and patients do not usually wear volunteers these informations. "There is a high rate of undetected mental disorders in the population," says Kenneth Kobak, a psychologist who led the study at the Dean Foundation for Health, Research and Education, Middleton, Wisconsin. "These people go to their regular doctors in the family, but doctors are not catching it."
So Kobak and his colleagues created a computer to ask questions based on a common questionnaire called the primary care evaluation of mental disorders, which is used to diagnose alcohol abuse, major depression, bulimia and other disorders. They set up an interactive voice response system, similar to that used by many directory assistance for telephone companies, where the computer asks a question, and the listener responds. in the review of 0 patients in four primary care clinics, a clinical eating disorder, and alcohol treatment facility, computer and medical disorders professional each found in approximately 60% of their patients. Even more striking, patients with alcohol abuse were twice as likely to admit their illness to the computer as their primary care physician.
Experts say that the computer system could be a useful aid for busy doctors. "It works very well for what it is, which is a screening device," says Jean Endicott, a psychologist at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University, New York. "I think the availability of these types of programs and procedures should certainly improve screening and detection, and hopefully treat these diseases. "
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