Psychiatric study of non-responders among elderly health examinees in Stockholm.

A psychiatric study has been carried out on a group of 72-year-olds. They were selected at random among the 2,878 persons born in 1905 and resident in the municipality of Stockholm who failed to appear for a general health checkup 6 years earlier. Among the 86 persons who could be evaluated of the 104 originally selected, 53 were found to be without psychiatric symptoms. Organic brain diseases were found in four cases, psychoses in three and neurotic disorders, chiefly depressive states, in 15 cases, while 10 subjects had sleeping disturbances and one chronic alcoholism. The social group distribution among the examinees indicated that it was those most in need of medical or social help who failed to participate in the health checkup.