Epidemiologic Analysis of the Inpatient Psychiatric Unit at a General Metropolitan Community Hospital of Buenos Aires city, Argentina

Abstract

To explore the frequency of sociodemographic, clinical, and therapeutic variables of the Inpatient Psychiatric Unit at the Italian Hospital of Buenos. Considering that the Inpatient Psychiatric Unit functions within a General Metropolitan Community Hospital, referent both at the local and the international level, we deem it relevant to perform an updated characterization of the population admitted into our Unit. This is especially important given the changes presented since the approval of the National Mental Health Law N° 26.657. We performed an observational descriptive and analytic cross-sectional study, studying the patients admitted into the Inpatient Psychiatric Unit for a period of 12 consecutive months (from October 1st, 2018, to September 30th, 2019). During the study period a total of 254 hospitalizations were registered. Mean Age: 51,85 years (S.D.=21,23), Median hospitalization time 22 days [IQR=14.00, 34.00], 31.5% of the admissions were involuntary. The most frequent cause of hospitalization was due to depressive episodes (32.7%), psychosis (22.8%), and dementia/behavioral symptoms (13%). 10.6% of the patients were admitted into our Unit after a suicide attempt. The present study provides an updated analysis of the hospitalized population. It contributes to outlining the changes that have taken place over the last years, because of the new legislation. The description of the epidemiologic characteristics of the inpatient population in our setting is crucial to have a current situation diagnosis that allows us to develop health-policy strategies and an adequate allocation of resources.