Symptoms analysis of mental illness among Saudi adults attending Primary Care

Objectives: To determine the more common symptomsof mental illness among Saudi adult primary health care(PHC) patients, and to apply the factor analysis of theRahim Anxiety and Depression (RAD) Scale.Methods: This is a cross-sectional study of a sample of641 patients that attended the PHC clinics in Al-Kharjcity, from July to November 2000. Their ages rangedfrom 15 to 65 years. The RAD Scale was used as aself-administrating questionnaire to explore the commonsymptoms of mental illness. A factor analysis wasperformed by principle component analysis with varimaxrotation of RAD Scale, with an eigen value of 1.5 forfactor extraction. Only those items loading 0.4 wereincluded.Results: A total of 609 patients with the mean age +SD of 33.7+13.4 responded, and of these men formed46.6%. The most common mental illness symptoms weregetting angry easily (46%), tension (35%), sleeping badly(27%), not enjoying daily activities (15%), andunhappiness (14%). Physical symptoms reported wereheadaches (43%), joint pains (38%), fatigue (36%),stomach problem (33%), and dizziness (27%). All the 39items of the RAD Scale were included for factor analysis.Five factors (groups) were generated, which togetheraccounted for 47% of the total variance. These factorswere represented as: psychic depressive, psychic andsomatic (headache and bodily pains) anxiety symptoms,somatization in the form of gastrointestinal complaints,somatization in the form of cardio-respiratory symptoms,and somatic anxiety symptoms.Conclusion: Both physical and psychologicalsymptoms of mental illness are a burden on the PHCpatients. Consequently, using the RAD scale is helpful indiagnosis. The factor analysis categorizes the items intodifferent groups to save time and specify the disorder.This will be a simplified method in the PHC settings.