Collaboration Between Community Mental Health Center and Family Medicine in Health Center Prijedor to Improve Physical Health of the Users with Schizophrenia and Similar Disorders

Abstract

Introduction

People with schizophrenia are in greater risk for various physical deseases than general population. It is one of causes of earlier death in this population group.

Objectives

In past 5 years has been noticed that physical health (PhyH) of users with schizophrenia and similar disorders was not monitored regularly by family doctors (FD) in Health Center (HC) Prijedor even is known greater risk for some diseases such as diabetes (DM), hypertension (HT), coronary disease (CD) or width gain (WG).

Aim

Community Mental Health Center (CMHC) need continuously work on better care for the users with schizophrenia in all services in HC especially by FD.

Method

There were conducted two courses for 12 FD teams in HC Prijedor (March and June 2013). FD had training from prevalence of ten most common physical diseases and interventions aimed at their prevention. Also, we provided to every team a brochure about those topics. Patients with schizophrenia (n=30), age 20-55 years were monitored regularly in period of 6 months (June-December 2013) for 11 PHyH parameters: weight, BMI, waist circumference, blood pressure, ECG, blood glucose, cholesterol (total, LDL and HDL), triglycerides and prolactine,

Results

FD were found on our patients hypertension (n=8), dyslipidemia (n=13), DM (n=3) and non-symptomatic hyperprolactinemia (n=4). Most of them (n=17) were obese.

Conclusions

Collaborative work between CMHC and FD were successful in the detecting of physical diseases in patients with schizophrenia. Also, new quality connections between FD and their patients were established. It is a stimulus for further enhancement of our cooperation.