On characterizing new psychiatric long-stay patients.

In order to characterize new long-stay patients at the Psychiatric Clinic of Berne University, a comparison of all new long-stay patients of a 12-months period (n = 44) with a random sample of hospital admissions (n = 58) was carried out. Demographic data, circumstances of admission and illness data were recorded. Psychiatric symptoms were documented by means of the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS), intelligence from the Progressive Matrices Test (PMT) and inadequate behaviour based upon a modified "Check List of Nonfunctional Behaviors". As expected, findings show that new long-stay patients differ from the control group not only in diagnoses, symptoms and inadequate behaviour but also in physical illnesses, education, intelligence and social status.