Referral Of Adults Research Articles

Coercive and voluntary referrals: How ethnic minority adults get into mental health treatment

Two hypotheses are typically invoked to examine the referral of adults into mental health care. The first is the clinical behavior hypothesis that suggests the psychiatric problem defines people as dangerous and risky. Accordingly, people with severe mental disorders are more likely to be coercively placed into mental health facilities. The second hypothesis suggests that people with less power are more likely than the powerful to be coercively placed in psychiatric care. We examine the extent to which these hypotheses are supported in a large urban community by investigating referrals into community mental health clinics that serve predominantly poor populations. The data set is unique because it includes four ethnic categories, whites, African Americans, Asian Americans, and Mexican Americans. The findings indicate that the clinical behavior hypothesis is applicable to whites and the stratification hypothesis is consistent with the data for African American, particularly African American men. The referral pattern for Mexican Americans and Asian Americans do not conform to the findings for whites and African Americans. It is likely that other sociocultural factors influence the referrals of these ethnic categories.

Initial report of the Australian National Pilot Liver Transplantation Programme

Our group began a National Pilot Liver Transplantation Programme in January, 1986, for which this report documents the results of the first 15 months' work. Seventy potential recipients (55 adults, 15 children) were referred for consideration for liver transplantation either directly or by state selection committees that had been established in most Australian states. The most common conditions for referral of adults were chronic active hepatitis, primary sclerosing cholangitis and primary biliary cirrhosis; 11 patients had fulminant hepatic failure. In children, the most common condition for referral was biliary atresia. Twenty-nine (41%) patients were considered unsuitable candidates for liver transplantation, 25 patients (21 adults and four children) were accepted for transplantation at a later time, and 16 patients (11 adults and five children) were selected for immediate transplantation. Of these 16 patients, three patients died before a donor could be found. Of the 13 patients to receive transplants (one patient received two transplants), 10 patients (seven of nine adults; three of four children) are alive and well; nine patients have good liver function and one patient has impaired liver function. The additional costs of the Programme to the hospitals were estimated at approximately $2 million a year. It is concluded that for those persons who require liver transplantation in Australia, worthwhile survival after this procedure can be obtained.