Crying patients in General/Family Practice: incidence, reasons for encounter and health problems

Abstract

Context: Despite evidence demonstrating the benefits of understanding patients, there is a paucity of information about how physicians address psychological and social concerns of patients. No one study has been published about the incidence of crying in General/Family Practice. Objective: To know the incidence of crying in primary care/general practice, and the patients’ characteristics, their reasons for encounter and their health problems. Design: A descriptive, prospective study, of one year, of three general practitioners/family physicians in Madrid, Spain. Setting: primary care (doctors’ office and patients’ home). Subjects: Face to face encounters with crying patients. Main outcome measure: At least one rolling tear. Results: Patients cried in 157 encounters out of a total of 18,627 giving an incidence rate of 8.4 per thousand. More frequent reasons for encounters were: feeling depressed (12.7%), social handicap (mainly social isolation/living alone) (6.4%), relationship problem with partner (5.1%) and feeling anxious (3.2%). More frequent health problems were: depressive disorder (23.6%), anxiety disorder (8.3%), cerebrovascular disease (5.1%) and loss/death of partner (3.8%). Conclusions: Crying in primary care is not uncommon. Reasons for crying cover the whole range of human problems, mainly social and psychological problems.