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. 2015 Oct;24(5):371-5.
doi: 10.1017/S2045796015000591. Epub 2015 Jul 29.

Psychiatric inpatient care: where do we go from here?

C Samele  1 , N Urquía  2
Affiliations

Psychiatric inpatient care: where do we go from here?

C Samele et al. Epidemiol Psychiatr Sci. 2015 Oct.

Abstract

The significant decline in the number of psychiatric hospital beds for more than two decades across Europe has changed the landscape of mental health services. This has rekindled debates about bed shortages and the reasons for variations in the number of inpatient beds, admissions to hospital and length of stay. Analysis of European Union (EU) level data shows that the UK has a relatively low number of admissions to hospital, yet a much higher than average length of stay compared with 12 other EU Member States. Understanding this is difficult, but recent studies shed some further light on the patterns and predictors of admissions and length of stay.

Keywords: Bed shortages; Europe; inpatient care; length of stay.

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Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Number of psychiatric care beds in hospitals (per 100 000 population) in 2011 by EU country. Source: Eurostat (2105).
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
Number of psychiatric inpatient admissions per 1000 population by EU country for patients diagnosed with schizophrenia. Source: WHO European Hospital Morbidity Database (2015).
Fig. 3.
Fig. 3.
Average length of stay (days) for patients with schizophrenia. Source: WHO European Hospital Morbidity Database (2015).
Fig. 4.
Fig. 4.
Average length of stay (days) for people diagnosed with schizophrenia by inpatient admissions per 1000 population. Source: WHO European Hospital Morbidity Database (2015).
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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