Utilization of emergency departments for psychiatric treatment.

Abstract

A survey of four Edmonton hospital emergency department records for a one month period was carried out to determine the frequency of utilization by patients suffering from psychiatric disorders. Male attenders outnumbered females and the majority of patients fell into the 21 — 50 year age range. Alcohol-related illness was almost three times more frequent in males than females, whereas females were more frequently categorized as suffering “personal distress” or presented as suicide attempts. Overall, seventy-three percent of the patients were discharged; of those admitted, females outnumbered males. The changing pattern of emergency department utilization was compared by examining data from one hospital for the years 1972, 1974 and 1976. During this four-year period the annual number of visits by psychiatric patients increased by almost eighty percent, largely due to dramatic increases in alcohol related problems in males and those described as “personal distress” in females. The establishment of intoxication recovery centres in 1973 paralleled a drop in the proportion of patients admitted to inpatient wards for alcohol-related, street drugs and overdose problems. The results of the present survey are compared to those reported in the relevant literature, and the methodological problems encountered in carrying out a retrospective study of emergency services from clinical records are described.