Abstract
Long duration of hospitalisation has been associated with negative consequences of isolating the patients from their social network, initiating maladaptive patterns in the patients and worsening the burden of care on the relatives. In this particular study, we were interested in determining factors that correlate with length of stay on admission among in-patients receiving psychiatric services in North-Central Nigeria. The prospective study was part of a larger in-patients study conducted on 112 consenting patients admitted in the psychiatric wards of Benue State University Teaching Hospital Makurdi, Federal Medical Centre Makurdi and Jos University Teaching Hospital Jos during the study period. Patients who stayed on hospital admission for more than twenty-eight (28) days were classified as ‘long stay’, conversely, those who were discharged from admission after spending 28 days or less were referred to as ‘short stay’ patients. A total of 112 subjects were recruited for the study, 67(59.8%) were female while 45(40.2%) were male, the mean age was 36.98±11.09 years and 54(48.2%) subjects were still married at the time of the study. Forty-two representing 37.5% of the respondents stayed on admission for more than 28 days. The mean duration of stay was 28.8±24.5 days. Long duration of stay was found to be significantly associated with the quality of intimate partner relationship (p=0.001), years of completed education (p=0.021), age group (p=0.001), nature of psychiatric diagnosis (p=0.014), pharmacotherapy (p=0.001), comorbid physical condition (p=0.001), previous admission (p=0.001), defaulted treatment (p=0.001), frequency of previous episodes (p=0.001) and the number of years a patient has had the mental disorder (p=0.001). We concluded that, assessing duration of stay on admission among in-patients treatment for psychiatric disorders is very necessary.
Highlights
The policy of deinstitutionalisation of psychiatric patients has tremendously discouraged the practice of prolonged in-patient stay on admission with its negative consequences of isolating the patients from their social networks, predisposition to maladaptive patterns of behaviour in the patients and worsening the burden of care on the relatives
A statistically significant association was found between length of stay (LOS) and the nature of psychiatric diagnoses (p=0.001), combination of psychotropic drugs (p=0.001), present of a comorbid physical diagnoses like Diabetes Mellitus, hypertension, Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) infection (p=0.001), previous admission in psychiatric wards (p=0.001), number of previous episodes (p=0.001), total duration of mental disorder (p=0.001), and a history of defaulted treatment (p=0.001)
This study revealed that, having an excellent/good relationship with intimate partners irrespective of the marital status is associated with shorter LOS on hospitalisation, a finding that is likely to be related to the impact of quality of relationship with the patients’
Summary
The policy of deinstitutionalisation of psychiatric patients has tremendously discouraged the practice of prolonged in-patient stay on admission with its negative consequences of isolating the patients from their social networks, predisposition to maladaptive patterns of behaviour in the patients and worsening the burden of care on the relatives. For these reasons, long duration of hospitalisation may be unaccepted by patients’ relatives[1], it is important to remind psychiatrists about the need to shorten length. The increasing number of patients needing hospitalisation for psychiatric services and OAJ. pg. 9
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