Psychiatric symptoms in the elderly in a primary care practice.

During a 15-month period in a rural group medical practice 1063 patients of four general internists completed a 49-item version of the Hopkins Symptom Check List (HSCL). This version of the HSCL measured symptoms of depression, anxiety, phobic anxiety, hostility, and interpersonal sensitivity. In comparison to younger groups, the elderly patients reported decreased symptomatology on all HSCL scales except the phobic anxiety scale. These differences could be due to a reporting effect, selective migration or mortality, a cohort effect, or they could reflect a true age effect, the view favored by the authors.