Patients who visited the psychiatric outpatient service of Chang Gung Medical Centre, Tao‐Yuan, Taiwan during an 8‐year period were studied retrospectively. Among the 10 418 outpatients, 86 (0.83%) were diagnosed as having DSM‐IV delusional disorder (DD), including 61 (70.9%) with persecutory type, 12 (14.0%) with the mixed type, seven (8.1%) with jealous type, two (2.3%) with somatic type, two (2.1%) with unspecified type, one (1.2%) with erotomanic type, and another one with grandiose type. The ratio of women to men was 0.86. The mean age at onset was 42.4 ± 15.41 years, with women being older than men. Thirty‐seven cases (43.0%) presented with depressive symptoms at their first visit. Subjects were divided into four groups: persecutory type, jealous type, mixed type and others. There were no significant differences between the four groups in terms of gender, age at onset, time‐lapse before seeking psychiatric help, the presence of hallucination or the presence of depression.

A special mental health clinic was set up in the gynecologic out-patient setting of a medical center. The present study examined the demographic and clinical characteristics of patients seen at the clinic and evaluated the need for mental health services in a gynecologic setting. Participants were 136 consecutive patients who visited the clinic during a 6 month period. Their ages ranged from 20 to 74 years, with a mean age of 41.5 ± 12.3 years. Twenty-three percent of women were referred by gynecologists. All subjects were interviewed by experienced psychiatrists using the structured Mini-International Neuropsychiatric Interview (MINI), supplemented by the DSM-IV criteria for premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) and other diagnoses. The most common diagnosis was major depressive disorder (36.0%), followed by generalized anxiety disorder (29.4%), PMDD (16.2%), dysthymic disorder (14.7%) and others. Patients were categorized into four major diagnostic categories: depressive disorders, anxiety disorders, PMDD and others. No significant differences were found in years of education, employment status, living situations or referral pattern among the four major diagnostic groups. Most patients with anxiety disorders were married. Our results suggest that the gynecologic department may be a good setting to help women with mental disorders.

Three hundred and sixty-four patients, 158 males and 206 females, were admitted to an acute psychiatric ward between November 1994 and October 1995, and only 9 patients (2 males and 7 females) fulfilled the clinical criteria for Capgras syndrome. The crude prevalence of Capgras syndrome in the acute psychiatric ward was 2.5% (1.3% for men and 3.4% for women), which is not uncommon. Medical records and laboratory examinations, including brain images and electroencephalographic examinations (EEG), were reviewed in the nine patients with Capgras syndrome. Four cases were proven to have apparently abnormal anatomical lesions on EEG, brain computed tomography, magnetic resonance imaging or single photon emission computed tomography ( 99m Tc-HMPAO) examinations and five cases were associated with major physical illness. These findings support that organic factors could be important in the pathogenesis of Capgras syndrome.