Bergen Psychiatric Emergency Room: The patients' sociomedical characteristics, patterns of use, and management

Abstract

This paper describes sociomedical characteristics, utilization pattern, and management of visitors at a newly opened urban psychiatric emergency room. A prospective case study series was performed on all 1318 visitors calling at Bergen Psychiatric Emergency Room during 26 months, totally 1506 visits. We recorded sociodemographic and clinical characteristics, the patients' own description of perceived problem and need, and the psychiatrist's management. Ten per cent made repeated visits to the service. The clientele of Bergen Psychiatric Emergency Room differs from the general population and the average psychiatric outpatient's sociodemographic profile in several ways. The visitors are younger and are more often divorced or unemployed. One-third of the visitors had problems lasting more than 2 years. Fifty per cent of the attenders wanted a referral to a therapist or admittance to a hospital. Twenty per cent of the visitors received no further psychiatric treatment; the rest were either referred back to their own general practitioner, referred to an outpatient's clinic, or instantly admitted to hospital. The results indicate that the unit under study acts as a low-threshold service for patients who otherwise would have had trouble reaching psychiatric care in due time.