Determinants of the Diagnosis in the Demand for Psychological Aid in a Psychological Care Unit in a University Campus

Psychological consultation: conditions of the diagnosis.

Abstract

Abstract:

In this work we study the conditions that correlate with the clinical diagnosis that the psychologist makes in the first visits with the users who consult in the Unitat d'Atenció Psicològica del Servei Asssitencial de Salut of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.

Method: We make a statistical study based on the records of the users referred to the period 2010-2017, making contingency tables, 2 x 2, with 8 variables: age, sex, collective, first consultation on the symptom, time of appearance of the symptomatology, reason for the consultation, psychopharmacological treatment and clinical diagnosis. We focus on the relationship of dependence of the variables with the main variable, diagnosis.

Results: We found the relationship of dependence and interpreted the significant interactions of all the variables with the diagnosis, with the exception of age and sex that are independent.

Discussion and Conclusions. We obtain a specific user profile of the university context with prevalent diagnoses of adaptive disorder and, to a lesser degree, anxiety disorder, in users who mostly consult the psychologist for the first time, who are not under psychopharmacological treatment at the time of consultation, with a average age of 33 years, mostly women, who approximately a half consult in time intervals less than a year of having symptoms. What moves the consultation mostly has to do with less mental suffering from the suffering that is found in the public mental health network.