BACKGROUND Shared decision making is a promising model for patient-centred medicine, resulting in better clinical outcomes overall. In the mental health field, interventions that consider the patient-centred perspective--such as patient quality of life, involvement in the treatment, treatment satisfaction, and working alliance--have increased and better clinical outcomes discovered for patients...

OBJECTIVE To determine the outcomes of mental health care users (MHCU's) admitted in terms of Section 40 of the South African Mental Health Care Act (No 17 of 2002) (MHCA) and the factors, if any, that are associated with these outcomes. METHOD The study was a retrospective record review of MHCU's, 18 years and older, referred by the South African Police Service (SAPS) to Chris Hani Baragwana...

For the purpose of this article, a specialist psychiatric unit refers to any community project, out-patient clinic, hospital ward or. as in the case of Henderson, a whole hospital which specialises in providing a specific type of treatment or treatment to a particular patient group(s). Specialist psychiatric units may be particularly vulnerable at this time when, because of the implications of ...

There is usually great concern over the use of psychiatric patients for clinical research, as it raises the ethical and legal issues of human dignity and autonomy. In this paper the authors describe and evaluate a follow-up neurobiological study of patients who had been dischargedfrom a psychiatric research ward at least ten months earlier. It is pointed out that such studies are rare and that ...

The recognition of psychiatric emergencies would seem to be easy. This is certainly true if one thinks of the intoxicated alcoholic who is threatening to kill himself or someone else, or the patient on a surgical ward who reports that persecutors are out to get him. However, we may be dealing with just as much of a psychiatric emergency when confronted by the little old lady who does not wish t...

In our report we would like to present a case of a 60-year-old patient with epileptic seizures, affective disturbances, only mild neurocognitive disorders and cardiomyopathy. A female patient was taken to the internal ward with a tentative diagnosis of recurrent syncope. Laboratory results disclosed severe hypocalcaemia, hypoparathyroidism, and hypothyroidism. An echocardiogram revealed left ve...

A quality improvement project was initiated on Ivory ward, a functional older adult psychiatric inpatient ward at Newham Centre for Mental Health, part of the East London NHS Foundation Trust. The project was started by staff on the ward after it had come to their attention that their ward had the highest bed occupancy and length of stay across similar wards in the trust. The mean bed occupancy...

Previous reports have suggested that the level of serious violence In psychiatric patients Is low (Pearson et al, 1986). However, there Is now concern that the level of violence Is Increasing (James et al, 1990; Omérovet al, 1990). Violence has obvious undesirable effects (eg. Increased staff and patient stress and a generally poor atmosphere on the ward), and may also be associated with alter...

Methods Seven patients suffering from epileptic seizures followed by a schizophrenia-like state were examined. They all were men admitted at the ward of the III Psychiatric Clinic, Sapienza University, Rome, Italy. Psychiatric diagnoses were determined according to the DSM-IV criteria. Assessment of epilepsy and localization of seizure foci were determined by collaborating neurologists on the b...