Season-dependent symptoms in consultation-liaison patients

INTRODUCTION: We investigated those psychiatric patients whose reason for seeking medical help was primarily a physical condition. Our objectives were to analyse to what extent they suffered from seasonal variation in mood and behaviour during winter, and to examine whether these patients were evenly distributed between the categories of the ICD-10 Classification of Mental and Behavioural Disorders (ICD-10) by their primary diagnosis of mental disorder. METHOD: Patients attending the psychiatric services of a consultation liaison unit were interviewed for diagnosis, and were asked to fill in a questionnaire on seasonal variation in mood and behaviour. RESULTS: Our results suggest that there are many patients fulfilling the criteria based on the Seasonal Pattern Assessment uestionnaire (SPA) for seasonal affective disorder (SAD) or for subsyndromal SAD, not only in the ICD-10 diagnosis category of mood (affective) disorders but also in other disorder categories. CONCLUSION: This observation is of importance to hospital and private clinicians, as it emphasizes the need to assess the clinical picture in detail and to consider treatment alternatives for patients presenting with mental disorder with a seasonal pattern. (Int J Psych Clin Pract 2000; 4:151-154)