Abstract
Background:: Specialty psychosomatic clinics are a felt need in low- and middle-income countries, but its benefits and challenges have not been reported so far. Aims:: To describe the process, challenges, and opportunities that we encountered in setting up a specialty psychosomatic clinic at a government medical college in South India. Methods:: The biweekly psychosomatic clinic was located in the Department of Psychiatry and manned by a multimodal team. Structured questionnaires were used to evaluate all patients. All psychiatric diagnoses were made as per International Classification of Diseases-10, clinical descriptions and diagnostic guidelines. Management comprised both pharmacotherapy and psychotherapeutic interventions. Results:: A total of 72 patients registered for services in the 1st year of the clinic. The mean age of the sample was 36.6 years (range 1460 years). A median of 2 years and 19 visits to various care providers had elapsed before their visit to the clinic. The index contact was a general practitioner in the majority of cases though an overwhelming majority (95.6%) had also sought specialist care. The most common diagnostic cluster was the somatoform group of disorders (50.0%). Antidepressants were the most commonly prescribed medications (70.6%). Conclusion:: The specialty psychosomatic clinic provided better opportunities for a more comprehensive evaluation of people with medically unexplained symptoms and better resident training and focused inter-disciplinary research. It describes a scalable model that can be replicated in similar resource constrained settings.
Copyright
Association for Helping Neurosurgical Sick People. This is an open access article published by Thieme under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Derivative-Non Commercial License, permitting copying and reproduction so long as the original work is given appropriate credit.
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This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives License, which permits unrestricted reproduction and distribution, for non-commercial purposes only; and use and reproduction, but not distribution, of adapted material for non-commercial purposes only, provided the original work is properly cited.
