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Controlled assessment of alcoholics admitted involuntarily to a general psychiatric hospital

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2014

Fionnula O'Loughlin  and
Marcus Webb
Fionnula O'Loughlin
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, St Patrick's Hospital, Dublin 8 and Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland
Marcus Webb
Affiliation:
Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland
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Abstract

Objective: As the provision for the involuntary admission to hospital of alcoholics is likely to be discarded in a new Irish Mental Health Act, the characteristics of patients committed under the 1945 Irish Mental Treatment Act were explored and compared with those alcoholics admitted voluntarily.

Method: All alcoholics admitted compulsorily from 1989-1992 to a general psychiatrichospital in Dublin were compared retrospectively with voluntarily admitted alcoholics. Data was taken from case notes.

Results: Results showed that patients admitted compulsorily were older (t = 3.74, df = 62, p < 0.001) and had more physical complications (X2 = 8.4, df = 1, p < 0.004) than those admitted voluntarily. Although results did not reach a statistically significant level, there were proportionately more females in the compulsorily admitted group compared with the voluntary group. The outcome of admission overall was better in those admitted voluntarily, although this was influenced both by length of stay and previous admissions for treatment of alcohol dependence. One particularly interesting finding, regardless of admission category, was that duration of admission was statistically significantly longer for women when compared with men.

Conclusions: Compulsory admission of alcoholics to a psychiatric hospital for very brief periods was not shown to be strikingly helpful, but this study cannot decide whether or not longer periods of compulsory admission would be valuable.

Keywords

Involuntary admissionAlcoholismIrish Mental Treatment Act
Type
Original Papers
Information
Irish Journal of Psychological Medicine , Volume 13 , Issue 4 , December 1996 , pp. 140 - 143
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1996

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