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Keywords

Length of stay, Psychiatry, General hospital psychiatry unit, Health economics

Abstract

Backgroud: The state of existing mental health services in low- and middle-income countries are inadequate, inequitable and inefficient.One of the ways to ensure effective health care service utilization is by analyzing the length of stay.

Objectives: 1. To assess the length of stay in psychiatry in-patient unit in a general hospital psychiatry unit. 2. To assess the various soil-demographic and clinical factors affecting length of stay.

Materials and methods: This was an analytical cross-sectional study. Study sample was formed by all patients who were above 18 years of age, admitted into psychiatry in-patient unit. Data was collected from the case records of the in-patients and the clinical interview.

Results: One hundred patients were included in the study.The mean length of stay was 7.85 ± 5.17 days. Patients without family history of psychiatric illness (7.94 ± 5.40 v/s 5.56 ± 4.66; p = 0.038), patients with manic episode (9.86 ± 5.94), or psychotic disorders (7.71 ± 5.42) or substance use disorder (7.08 ± 3.45) had a longer hospital stay than the patients with depressive (6.4 ± 5.13) and stress related disorders (3.9 ± 2.08). Further patients who required administration of injectable psychotropics (9.60 ± 4.34 v/s 7.20 ± 5.29; p = 0.050)or depot antipsychotics (12.10 ± 6.86 v/s 7.38 ± 4.77; p = 0.0062 ) or administration of ECTs (9.92 ± 6.82 v/s 6.64 ± 3.4; p = 0.0018)or, those who needed physical restraints (11.6 ± 7.46 v/s 7.43 ± 4.73; p = 0.0148) were associated with significantly longer hospital stay.

Conclusion: Average length of stay in this study was about a week. Presence of family hisotry of psychiatric illness, the psychiatric diagnoses, treatment modalities like ECT, injectibles, physical restrain showed string association with the length of the stay.

Pages

313

Last Page

319

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