This study was designed to investingate the somatic symptom characteristics among the hospitalized depressives.
One hundred and sixty four cases investigated in this study were obtained from the department of neuropsychiatry of St. Mary´s Hospital, from July 1974 to March 1977.
The results were as follows:
1) In the incidence of depression, female was 2.5 times higher than male among hospitalized population of somatic complaints.
2) In the distribution of ages, the highest frequency was observed to be the period of 40-44 and 25-29 years of age in male, and 35-39 and 30-34 years of age in female.
3) High incidences of somatic complaints were noticed to be gastrointestinal system (77.4%), head and sensory organ(76.8%), and sleep condtion (61.6%).
4) The items of somatic complaints with high incidence rate were difficulty in falling asleep (39.1%), headache (33.6%), poor appetite (31.8%), physical weakness and fatigue (29.1%), chest tightness (18.4%), palpitation (17. 1%), wakefulness during night (14.6%), indigestion (14.0%), and dizziness (14.0%) .
5) The incidence rate of gastrointestinal complaints of female was higher than that of male signif icantly(p 0.05) . And the incidence rate of sleep disturbance in male was higher than that of female significantly (P0.01).
6) Seventy one cases(43.3%) in this study had been nonpsychiatric treatment before psychiatric admission.
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