ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a profile of psychiatric morbidity for the adult clientele of primary health services in one health district of Salvador, Bahia. It examines the quality of data recording of the health registry, with regard to information on mental and emotional disorders. Many epidemiological studies of mental disorders in primary-care settings have been conducted in developed countries and in some Third World countries. Women had proportionately more minor mental disturbance than men, and the frequency was also raised in the low-income groups of the population. The health district of Itapagipe is located on the west side of Salvador, capital city of the state of Bahia, north-east Brazil. In 1986, there were 18,990 new registrations for primary health care at the health institutions of the district. Initially, a pilot study was conducted in order to explore the prospects for institutional co-operation, the state of the medical files and the feasibility of data gathering.
