[Psychiatric service in general hospital]

The article summarizes the 3-year (1998-2000) consulting and treatment experience of a psychotherapeutic unit in one Moscow general hospital. Psychiatrists realized emergent and planned consultations of the mentally-ill patients in all hospital departments, conducted, in addition to general treatment, psychopharmacotherapy and psychotherapy or directed them, on demand, to psychiatric hospitals. For the 3-year period, the psychiatrists have consulted 4685 somatic patients with comorbid mental diseases (5% of the total amount of the patients admitted to the hospital at that period), 1360 patients (29%) being affected with psychotic disorders. One hundred eighty two patients were diagnosed to have schizophrenia, 784--arteriosclerosis and old-age psychosis and dementia, 45--reactive psychosis, 16--epilepsy (disphoria and psychotic episodes), 67--mental retardation with inadequate behavior, 266--delirium of alcoholic and drug addiction genesis. In some cases, usage of psychotropics, in combination with psychotherapy, has resulted in recovery or considerable psychic state improvement in 9.1% of the patients, improvement in 52% ones, insignificant improvement in 36%. In 2.9% of the cases, the effect of treatment has not been achieved.