[New long-term patients--demographic and diagnostic peculiarities]

This paper presents results of a study which was done as part of an investigation on predictor variables for new long-stay patients. Using easily accessible data, e.g. age, sex, diagnosis, etc., 145 new long-stay patients of the Psychiatric Department of Berne University (PUK Bern) admitted from 1979 to 1982 were compared with all in-patients and 396 old long-stay patients of the same clinic, as well as with British and German case-register populations. A total of 3.1% of all admissions in this four-year-period received in-patient treatment for more than one year; this proportion is similar to those reported from British and German case-registers. Older patients tend to have more long stays in hospitalizations; only 25% in the PUK new long-stay population were aged 65 and over. The sex ratio men: women was 1:1, whereas there are twice as many women as men among new long-stay patients in Great Britain. Looking at marital status we found, as could be expected, only very few married people (15%), compared with 62% unmarried and 23% widowed or divorced. The diagnostic composition showed that organic brain syndromes, schizophrenia, personality disorders, and mental retardation were over-represented in the new long-stay population. The diagnostic comparison between new and old long-stay patients showed substantial differences which proved to be congruent with the results of other investigators.