Hospital stay of in-patients in a general hospital psychiatry unit.

This report examines the hospital stay of psychiatric in-patients in a general hospital psychiatric setting.The hospital stay days, psychiatric diagnosis, outcome, number of re-admission and some socio-demographic details of patients admitted during one year period were recorded and analysed. The mean hospital stay was 29.39 ± 20.43 days. 60% patients stayed less than 4 weeks. The mean hospital stay of various categories was calculated. Schizophrenics 29.62 ± 25.82 days, manic depressives 35.29 ± 33.04 days and neuroses 24.83±18.43 days. Chronic Schizophrenics stayed longest (43.64±22.56) days. Of the Affective Psychosis group, between manics and depressives no difference was noticed. Good prognosis and relatively benign conditions had a briefer stay. Patients with no improvement stayed for significantly shorter- period (p< .001). Readmission cases tend to stay longer than fresh admissions (p< .05). The implications and interpretations especially in a general hospital psychiatric setting are discussed.