BACKGROUND The pathways to care in a first onset psychosis are diverse and may influence the chances of early treatment and therefore the duration of untreated psychosis. We test which pathways to care are associated with a delay in receiving treatment and a longer duration of untreated psychosis (DUP). METHODS In a population based survey, we interviewed 480 people with first episode psychos...

abstract introduction: the aim of this study was to compare the therapeutic and adverse effects of haloperidol to the combination of haloperidol and promethazine (antipsychotic + antihistamine) for controlling patients with aggressive or violent behavior referred to psychiatric emergency rooms. methods: using a double-blind randomized controlled trial, 100 psychiatric patients admitted to emerg...

Gender differences in patterns of self-harm in developed countries are well documented. Little is however known about gender differences in the epidemiology of self-harm in South Africa (SA) and about gender differences in medical service utilisation among self-harm patients. We set out to investigate gender differences in demographic, socio-cultural, clinical characteristics and medical servic...

OBJECTIVE To describe the Psychiatric Emergency Research Collaboration (PERC), the methods used to create a structured chart review tool and the results of our multicenter study. METHOD Members of the PERC Steering Committee created a structured chart review tool designed to provide a comprehensive picture of the assessment and management of psychiatric emergency patients. Ten primary indicat...

Tobacco dependence is the leading cause of death in persons with psychiatric and substance use disorders. This has lead to interest in the development of pharmacological and behavioral treatments for tobacco dependence in this subset of smokers. However, there has been little attention paid to the development of tobacco-free environments in psychiatric institutions despite the creation of smoke...

In spring 1940 Annie Altschul, an Austrian probationer nurse at Ealing Voluntary Hospital in London, was forced to leave her employment. Altschul was later to become a pioneer in psychiatric nursing and in 1976 was appointed Professor of Nursing at Edinburgh University, the first from her specialism to attain this rank. In 1940, however, Altschul, a socialist and former Viennese mathematics stu...

OBJECTIVE The purpose of the study was to identify variables that predicted three different dispositions of patients seen in a psychiatric emergency room: hospitalization, an emergency housing program, and an outpatient crisis program. METHODS Social, psychiatric, demographic, and vocational characteristics of 50 patients in each disposition group were examined to learn whether they varied su...

We sincerely appreciate the thoughtful discussion of our study from Drs. Moulin and Jones. However, we would like to provide clarification on several of the points they raised. As Moulin and Jones correctly indicate, there is no delineation of the relative acuity of the study patients to those seen in other emergency settings in California. However, we are unaware of any established metric to p...

This study explores the usefulness of clinical rating scales in the assessment of suicidal risk in an urban psychiatric teaching hospital. Admission for clinically evaluated suicide risk was the outcome variable because actual suicide occurs rarely. Six clinical scales identified high-risk patients: the Modified SAD PERSONS scale, revised Beck Depression Inventory, Beck Anxiety Inventory, Beck ...