How patients experience admission to a closed psychiatric department. II. Self assessment
Olano, F.J.; Poulstrup, I.; Pedersen, M.; Sørensen, P.E.; Gjerlev, P.
Ugeskrift for Laeger 149(37): 2488-2490
1987
ISSN/ISBN: 0041-5782 PMID: 3450072 Document Number: 296828
In order to investigate how patients experience hospitalization in a closed psychiatric department, the patient's sensation of dependence, incapacity of managing his own affairs and stigmatization during hospitalization were investigated by means of a structured interview. The great majority of patients (91%) expressed feelings of dependence. The sensation of incapacity was somewhat rarer (80%) and slightly more than half of the patients (54%) experienced the hospitalization as stigmatizing. The authors investigated tendencies, differences and connections between the ages of the patients, sex, diagnosis, duration of hospitalization and the number of admissions to a psychiatric hospital in relation to the three above mentioned variables. Experience of incapacity and stigmatizing were definitely more marked where women were concerned. In both sexes, a definite tendency to decrease in the experience of dependence and incapacity was observed with increasing age whereas the sensation of stigmatization became more frequent with increasing age. The sensation of stigmatization became more frequent, the longer the duration of hospitalization. The diagnosis-related variations revealed that the group of character-deviations and drug addicts had the lowest frequency of sensations of incapacity and stigmatization.