心因性皮膚疾患크리닉 환자들에 關한 豫備調査

A Preliminary Study on the Demographic and Clinical Characteristics of Psychodermatology Outpatient Clinic Patients

In 1983 the psychodermatoloy outpatient clinic was established at the Seoul National University Hospital, open one afternoon a week, where one liaison-psychiatrist and one dermatologist conjointly treat the patients referred from the dermatology outpatient clinic. This study purported to investigate the demographic characteristics and clinical aspects of the total 51 patients treated at the clinic during the period from March 1, 1983 to Feb. 28，1984，and the results were summarized as follows: (1) Males predominated over females (62.7% vs 36.396) and there were no age-specific findings. Majority of the patients came from middle-and lower socioeconomic classes (90.096) and majority of the patients suffered from psychiatric problems rather than actual dermatologic disorders (81.096). (2) Pruritus was the most frequent complaint among them, with males on the anogenital regions (45.5%) and females on the facial region (54.6%), and the most frequent psychiatric diagnosis was monosymptomatic hypochondriacal psychosis (25.0%). (3) While two-fifth (42.1%) of the patients dropped- out after 1-2 visits, the fact that another two-fifth (39.5%) continued to visit the clinic more than 5 times showed our liaison activities gave some positive impacts in the care of psychodermatologic problems. It also seemed that with a better psychological preparations for those patients upon the referral by the dermatologists the early drop-out rate could be markedly reduced.