A Nigerian long-stay psychiatric unit: a survey of its psychiatric service.

The characteristics of 226 patients in a long-stay psychiatric hospital in Nigeria were studied in an one-day survey. 74% of the patients were taken to the centre by close relatives while 23% were referred by the police or courts. The three main psychiatric diagnoses found were schizophrenia (67%), organic psychoses (20%) and affective psychoses (10%). A total of 23% of the patients were in the hospital for more than two years while 35% had spent more than 3 months in the hospital. Seventy-four of the patients no longer received visitors and 63 complained of having no home to go if discharged. The socio-psychiatric implications of the findings are discussed.