Year: 2006
Type: article
Abstract: I. Summary_ Psychiatric emergency services are both the gateways to inpatient psychiatric and substance abuse units and the back-ups for outpatient psychiatric services.Their utilization is a function of the rate of psychiatric emergencies.In turn, the use of these services can be used as a proxy indicator to establish trends in the incidence of the exacerbation of psychiatric illnesses.Need as well as demand for psychiatric emergency services are affected by a complex of long-term and short-term factors.Fluctuations in the prevalence of psychiatric conditions and the availability of other services determine the workload and the need for preparedness of the existing services.There is evidence in the literature for the role of the following factors in the utilization of psychiatric emergency services" availability of insurance, availability of outpatient and community services, recent increase in reporting suicidal ideation but decline of actual suicides, the time when substance users receive payments, alcohol consumption in the evening, the level of sunshine, ambient temperatures.On the other hand, there is no evidence that war and terrorism, decreased inpatient stays and telephone crisis lines have an influence on the rate of psychiatric emergencies.Furthermore, there is no support to the popular opinion that the full moon, atmospheric changes, holidays or weekends change the rate of psychiatric emergencies.
Author: George Varai
Language: English
Subfield: Clinical Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1551766444