Psychosomatic Medicine 9:45-49 (1947)
© 1947 American Psychosomatic Society

The Incidence of Personality Disturbances and their Relation to Age, Rank and Duration of Hospitalization in Patients with Medical and Surgical Disorders in a Military Hospital

¹ New York Hospital and the Departments of Medicine (Neurology) and Psychiatry, Cornell University Medical College, and the Psychiatric Division, Bellevue Hospital, New York, N. Y.

An investigation was undertaken to ascertain the number of symptoms of personality and psychosomatic disturbance to which patients on medical and surgical wards admit. The Cornell Service Index was used for this purpose.

A higher percentage (33 per cent) of white patients had high neurotic potential manifested by scores of 23 or more on the Index than did troops on duty (22 per cent) from whom these patients were drawn. For Negro troops these figures are 50 per cent and 36 per cent.

Non-commissioned officer-patients, both white and Negro, were less frequently neurotic than privates and privates first-class. Thirty-three per cent of white privates and privates first-class had scores above 22 and 17 per cent of non-commissioned officers had such scores. For Negro patients, these figures are 50 per cent and 24 per cent.

White patients with a significant neurotic potential, as manifested by scores of 23 or more on the Cornell Service Index, were on the average three years younger than those with scores of less than 23. In Negro patients, on the other hand, those with neuroses were on the average two years older.

In patients with hemorrhoids, hernia, acute appendicitis, and primary atypical pneumonia, those with high neurotic potential had an average duration of hospitalization 12 per cent greater than those without. This is comparable to a 16 per cent difference found in a previous study on patients with acute minor respiratory infections.