These tools will no longer be maintained as of December 31, 2024. Archived website can be found here. PubMed4Hh GitHub repository can be found here. Contact NLM Customer Service if you have questions.


Pubmed for Handhelds

PUBMED FOR HANDHELDS

Search MEDLINE/PubMed

  • Title: Community-based psychiatry: long-term patterns of care in South-Verona.
    Journal: Psychol Med; 1991; Suppl 19():1-54. PubMed ID: 1852853.
    Abstract:
    Community-based psychiatry has attracted a wide interest in the last 20 years. However, the evidence in the literature on monitoring and evaluating community psychiatric services for a long period of time is scanty. The aim of this monograph is to present the results of a number of evaluative studies, covering a ten-year period, conducted in South-Verona, an area of 75,000 inhabitants in Northern Italy, where a new community-based system of care, the South-Verona Community Psychiatric Service (CPS), has operated since 1978. This system, which is based on the provisions of the Italian psychiatric reform, is alternative to the old hospital-centred system of care, and provides care and support to all types of patients, without back-up from the mental hospital, where only a few old long-stay in-patients continue to reside. In the first part of the monograph, trends in the provision of psychiatric care in the period 1979-1988 are presented, using the South-Verona Psychiatric Case Register (PCR). Both one-day and one-year prevalence figures and incidence rates are lower than in other register areas outside Italy, partly because of the smaller number of specialized out-patient services available in South-Verona and partly because of less use of in-patient care in our area. Moreover, there is a tendency in Italy to care for elderly patients in geriatric institutions outside the psychiatric system. Most of the patients seen in any year are treated without in-patient care. This applies to all diagnostic groups, except affective psychosis. Rates of compulsory admission dropped dramatically after the reform. The total number of admissions to all in-patient psychiatric facilities (including private hospitals) in 1988 is only 8.4% lower than that found in 1977 (one year prior to the reform), while the mean number of occupied beds in 1988 was 47% lower than in 1977. In South-Verona point-prevalence of long-stay in-patients has slowly decreased over the years and there is a negligible build-up of new long-stay in-patients. The South-Verona CPS is now taking care of most psychiatric patients who, before the reform, would have been admitted to the mental hospital and become long-stay. These patients, who may be defined as long-term patients in the community, have consistently accumulated since 1981 and are making high use of psychiatric community services.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 400 WORDS)
    [Abstract] [Full Text] [Related] [New Search]