Objective
The aim of this study was to investigate the extent (in terms of number of contacts) and trends in psychiatric consultations at the General Cremona Hospital over three years (2007-2009), and to compare data with those of international literature.
Methods
We recorded the number of conducted consultations, divided between emergency department and hospital wards and verified the quantitative differences between the different specialist departments, grouped in medical and surgical areas. The information obtained from patients include socio-demographic data (age and sex) and psychiatric diagnoses according to the following grouping: organic mental disorders and dementia, alcoholism and drug addiction, psychosis, mood disorders, anxiety disorders, personality disorders, no psychiatric disorder. Data were statistically processed through the SPSS 12.0 for Windows software.
Results
The average annual rate of psychiatric consultation was 1.45% in 2007, 1.2% in 2008 and 1.2% in 2009. With regard to differences by gender, there were no significant differences. Almost seventy percent of psychiatric consultations were required by the emergency department (ED). The other requests came from medical departments (83.5%) and from surgical wards (16.5%). Regarding individual departments, we observed a very low percentage of requests from the Gynecology and Obstetrics Division, that was about one third compared to other surgical wards. The same numerical proportion within medical areas was observed for the Oncology Unit in relation to other departments in the medical area. With regard to psychiatric diagnoses, the most common in all departments were mood disorders. Among the ED and wards we observed the following differences: greater representation of psychosis in ED compared to organic mental disorders and greater occurrence of anxiety disorders in ED.
Conclusions
The average annual rate of psychiatric consultations conducted over three years in the Cremona Hospital was 1.28%, shortly lower than that reported in the literature. With regard to diagnoses the most frequent were mood disorders followed by anxiety disorders, personality disorders, organic mental disorders and dementia, schizophrenia and psychotic disorders, alcoholism and addictive disorders.