Evaluation of community psychiatry: a cross-sectional study

This study demonstrates a simple epidemiological method to evaluate the changes in service pattern for a defined catchment area after the establishment of a hospital-based community psychiatry service in Denmark. It measures the number of patients in contact with the service on 2 census days, before the new service was introduced and 3 years later, and deals with quantitative measures of sex, age, diagnosis and type of service contact. The services for 2 other areas are used as controls. A new community psychiatry service with an office situated outside the hospital is described and is shown to be superior to both the psychiatry service from the hospital and the rest of the hospital service: the number of inpatients and day patients were reduced by 42% vs 12% and 16% respectively. The number of outpatients increased by 104% in the new service compared with 23% for the service located at the hospital. The increase in outpatient care for the service outside the hospital was mainly caused by contact with middle-aged women with personality disorders.