[Living conditions and social needs of long-term psychiatric patients]

The purposes of this case-referent study were to investigate psychiatric long-term patients' social living conditions compared with these of the background population, their need of social support and to find a possible connection between these conditions and the patients' utilization of care. Our cases were 85 psychiatric long-term patients in Psychiatric Department, Horsens Sygehus, Denmark, interviewed in autumn 1987. Our control group was the population in the catchment area of the department. The distribution of social living conditions in the control group is estimated by a cross-section sample, interviewed as part of the welfare survey of 1986. Psychiatric long-term patients belonged to lower social classes and had lower family-gross-income (p = 0.008, p = 0.009, respectively). They suffered more frequently from nervous complaints (p less than 0.0001). 84% lacked close social contacts and/or lacked influence compared with 47% in the total population (p less than 0.00001). 57% of the patients appeared to need at least one kind of social support. The patients who appeared to be in need of four various kinds of support used the treatment facilities more often than the rest of the patients (p = 0.02) and so did the patients with health problems or those whose close social contacts were deficient and/or lacked influence (p less than 0.05).