[The "restraint" controversy in geriatric psychiatry. Focus study of factors influencing restraint measures]

The study examines the relationship between frequency and duration of restraints in psychogeriatric inpatients with their respective diagnosis, medication, reason for restraints, and age as a socio-demographic variable. Entered in the analysis were data from 590 inpatients from a total of 29 institutions within the Federal Republic of Germany psychogeriatric facilities; this was 24.7% of all psychogeriatrically treated inpatients on the survey day in the said 29 institutions. The data were analyzed via simple multifactorial analyses of variance followed by multiple classification analysis (SPSS for Windows). Neither age nor diagnosis showed any differential influence on frequency or duration of restraints. Among the reasons for restrains hetero-aggression led to fewer and shorter restraints; self-aggression led to fewer but longer restraints. Restless patients were restrained more often but for shorter intervals. The main psychopharmacological strategy, while having no influence on the frequency of restraints, showed a marked influence on their duration; patients treated with low potent neuroleptics had particularly short intervals of restraints, whereas patients free from psychopharmacological agents showed distinctly longer intervals of restraints than the mean of restrained patients.