PTSD in mental health outpatient settings: highly prevalent and under-recognized.

Objectives: To estimate the current prevalence of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and the diagnosis rate of this disorder ascertained by psychiatrists in training.

Methods: We interviewed 200 adults under treatment in a university mental health outpatient clinic. The PTSD diagnoses obtained using the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (SCID-IV) were compared with the patients' medical records.