Few questionnaires on the psychopathological onset and latency to treatment in psychiatric patients are currently available.

In this perspective we developed a brief questionnaire: the Psychopathological Onset Latency and Treatment Questionnaire (POLQ).

The questionnaire was administered to 265 patients with any psychiatric diagnosis. Statistical analyses were performed using SPSS.

The sample showed the following demographic variables in terms of age (48 ± 15 years), occupation (17% unemployed) and familiarity (54%). Clinical variables included: age at onset (30.66 ± 15 years), age at first diagnosis (36 ± 19 years) and age at first drug treatment (35 ± 14 years). the most common symptoms at onset were related to the anxiety spectrum (41.2%), mood spectrum (24.5%) or both (25.3%). Stressful life-events in relation to onset occurred in 63% of patients (12.1% familiar issues, 11.3% work problems, bereavement or end of a relationship in 16.6%). Most frequent first diagnoses were major depressive episode (26.8%), manic/hypomanic/mixed episode (13.6%) and anxiety disorders (11.7%). Average latency to the first visit was 34 months. in the 76.2% of the sample, the first contact was with a psychiatrist, a psychologist in 15.8%; 78.1% were treated with drugs as a first treatment, 11.7% with psychotherapy, 7.2% with both. the average duration of first treatment was 23 months (4 weeks - 360 months) and reasons for discontinuation were: lack of efficacy (23.8%) or complete remission (21.9%).

POLQ resulted to be a useful and reliable instrument in the collection of information on the psychopatological onset and latency to treatment.