Associated Factors for Re-admission of the Patients with Psychiatric Disorders in National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), Sri Lanka

Abstract

According to WHO’s Global Burden of Disease 2010, nearly 450 million people suffer from behavioural or mental disorders in the world. Inpatient mental health treatment facilities are one of the ways of mental health help available to patients with psychiatric disorders. Patients who are discharged to home following an acute care after hospitalization, have a higher probability of being readmitted to hospital. Readmission has a significant impact on the reduction of the quality of life and the increase in the years of lost life due to psychiatric disorders. The objective of the study was to identify and assess the factors related to readmission explained by the relatives of patients with psychiatric disorders in NIMH. Descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted among a purposive sample of randomly selected 200 relatives of patients with psychiatric disorders. Ethical approval was obtained from the ethics review committees of KIU and NIMH. Researchers-administered structured questionnaire was used to collect the data from relatives who visit readmitted patient in wards five, eight, ten and twelve. Readmission rates were high among Schizophrenia patients (40%) and patients with Bipolar Affective Disorder (36%) and other disease conditions were manic disorder, depression, psychosis, post-partum psychotic, disorders due to drug abuse and intellectual disabilities, etc. Associated factors for readmission were poor drug compliance (79%), poor community support (80.5%), lack of a permanent care giver (84%) and lack of awareness of the relatives about proper patient management (56%), medical comorbidities, unplanned discharge, substance abuse, etc. Among readmissions 84% of patients did not attend to the regular follow up clinics. Most of the readmissions were preventable through proper discharge planning, provision of sufficient health education for the patients and their relatives, and regular follow up programmes.