[The pattern of patients admitted to psychiatric rehabilitation services: defining homogeneous groups. Multivariate...

To provide a multidimensional description about the pattern of patients recovered in some Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services, as emerging from identification of similar groups regarded the total severity.

A cross-sectional survey has been conducted on patients recovered in 4 Northern-Italy Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services. A statistical bottom-up analysis (Principal Components and Cluster Analysis) has been performed.

Any patient has been evaluated using a questionnaire with well-known rating scales (BPRS-psychiatric rating, Katx index and IADL index, IDS index of comorbidity) together with informations on sex, age, social and economic state, psychiatric history, therapeutic devices and staff involvement.

We analyzed 455 patients. 267 (58.7%) male and the mean age is 58.517.9. After statistical analysis, 4 clusters of patients has been found: the first group (106 patients) is younger, described as not seriously compromised, mostly with psychotic problems; the second (96 patients, most of them woman with diagnosis of dementia) is much older, with serious problems of independency and comorbidity. The third (82 patients) and fourth (171 patients) group show intermediate patterns. The level of care requested by these groups has been provided.

Our results show the usefulness of sophisticated statistical methods to describe patients recovered in psychiatric rehabilitation services. Moreover, our findings could be useful as good proposal to the people involved in this field, planning an active intervention in this area.