ABSTRACT
Insofar as depressive illness can be considered a single diagnostic entity, it probably constitutes the commonest one in mental health care. Although the aetiology and treatment of depression receive constant attention from psychiatric research workers, the usual patterns of mental health care delivered to all patients from a geographically circumscribed population have rarely been the subject of study. The psychiatric case register in Groningen, which since the end of 1973 has covered an urban population of approximately 45,000 offers an ideal opportunity to study patterns of care of specific diagnostic categories. The main objective of this study was to examine the relationship between diagnostic changes during the period of follow-up and patterns of mental health care, also monitored by the case register. The findings suggest not only administrative morbidity rates and patterns of care which are fairly stable over time, but also hierarchical ranking of diagnostic classes which can be related to measures expressing the intensity of mental health care.
