Physical findings in a psychiatric outpatient clinic.

To determine the frequency of previously undiagnosed, positive physical findings in a psychiatric outpatient clinic population, the authors examined the case records of 910 consecutively admitted patients who had been given screening physical examinations including urinalyses. They found that 20.4% of the patients had some medical abnormality that was previously undiagnosed, and they encourage psychiatrists to make the physical examination a routine part of their total psychiatric evaluation.