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Biomedical subjects

R Giel

Publications and source records attributed to R Giel.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

Inpatient care in an eastern and a western European area. A comparative case-register study.

Inpatient point-prevalence and admission rates in both mental hospitals and psychiatric wards in general hospitals in East Bohemia and in Drenthe (the Netherlands) were compared. A higher point-prevalence rate was found in Drenthe as there was a higher rate of long-stay patients. However, in East Bohemia the admission rates were higher for all diagnostic categories, except for neuroses, the admission rates for neuroses were twice as high in Drenthe. The differences were explained by the availability of complementary in-patient services and more developed out- and day-patient facilities in Drenthe.

Adolescent

Detecting psychopathology in young adults: the Young Adult Self Report, the General Health Questionnaire and the Symptom Checklist as screening instruments.

This study compares the screening capacity of an age-adjusted child-oriented questionnaire, the Young Adult Self Report (YASR) with two adult-oriented questionnaires, the General Health Questionnaire-28 (GHQ-28) and Symptom Checklist-90 (SCL-90) in a sample of young adults (18-25 years). The YASR performed just as well as the SCL-90 and both performed better than the GHQ-28. The relatively poor performance of the GHQ-28 compared with the YASR and SCL-90 could not be attributed to instrument characteristics or to the use of referral status as indicator of psychopathology. In assessing psychopathology in young adults an age-adjusted child-oriented instrument might be a good alternative to the existing adult-oriented instruments, especially when one takes into account the problem of data comparability over time in longitudinal studies in which children are followed into adulthood.

Adolescent

Predicting feasibility of day treatment for unselected patients referred for inpatient psychiatric treatment: results of a randomized trial.

OBJECTIVE: Because previous studies of day treatment as an alternative to inpatient treatment had major disadvantages or methodological shortcomings, the authors conducted a randomized controlled trial to estimate and predict the extent to which day treatment is feasible for unselected patients referred for inpatient treatment. METHOD: Of 160 patients, 57 were randomly assigned to the control condition and 103 were assigned to the experimental condition. Control patients received standard clinical care. In the experimental condition, day treatment was attempted as soon as the patient's condition permitted. The average number of nights per week that experimental patients spent away from the hospital was compared to the average number of nights away for patients under standard care. RESULTS: Day treatment was satisfactory for 40% of the experimental patients but was completely infeasible for another 40%. The level of surveillance needed in the first week, physical illness, number of previous admissions, depressive symptoms, and treatment by qualified psychiatrists versus registrars were variables predictive of these differences. CONCLUSIONS: In this unselected group of patients, no absolute contraindications against day treatment were found. This suggests that the selection criteria applied in nearly all other controlled studies on the subject were unwarranted. The approach used in this study facilitated treatment in the least restrictive environment possible.

Adolescent

Costs and benefits of day treatment with community care for schizophrenic patients.

The feasibility of day treatment with community care for schizophrenic patients was tested by means of a longitudinal randomized experiment with 34 experimentals and 16 controls: 38 percent could be treated satisfactorily in a day program that included a very active ambulatory service. The new approach did not improve prognosis with respect to psychiatric symptomatology, social role disabilities, or number of readmissions during the first year of followup. Total cost of treatment was less for day-treatment patients than for ordinary clinical patients.

Activities of Daily Living

SCAN. Schedules for Clinical Assessment in Neuropsychiatry.

After more than 12 years of development, the ninth edition of the Present State Examination (PSE-9) was published, together with associated instruments and computer algorithm, in 1974. The system has now been expanded, in the framework of the World Health Organization/Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Mental Health Administration Joint Project on Standardization of Diagnosis and Classification, and is being tested with the aim of developing a comprehensive procedure for clinical examination that is also capable of generating many of the categories of the International Classification of Diseases, 10th edition, and the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, revised third edition. The new system is known as SCAN (Schedules for Clinical Assessment in Neuropsychiatry). It includes the 10th edition of the PSE as one of its core schedules, preliminary tests of which have suggested that reliability is similar to that of PSE-9. SCAN is being field tested in 20 centers in 11 countries. A final version is expected to be available in January 1990.

Algorithms

Recognition, management and outcome of psychological disorders in primary care: a naturalistic follow-up study.

This article addresses the issues of recognition and labelling of psychological disorders (PDs) by general practitioners (GPs), and the association of recognition with management and outcome. Nearly 2000 attenders of 25 GPs were screened with the GHQ and a stratified sample of 296 patients was examined twice, using the Present State Examination (PSE) and Groningen Social Disability Schedule (GSDS). Prevalence rates of PDs according to the GHQ, GP and PSE were 46%, 26% and 15% respectively. For the 1450 'new' patients, i.e. patients who had no PD diagnosed by their GP in the 12 months prior to the enrollment visit, these rates were 38%, 14%, and 10%. GPs missed half of the PSE cases and typically assigned non-specific diagnoses to recognized cases. Depressions were more readily recognized than anxiety disorders, and the detection rates for severe disorders were higher than those for less severe disorders. Recognition was strongly associated with management and outcome. Recognized as compared to non-recognized cases were more likely to receive mental health interventions from their GP and had better outcomes in terms of both psychopathology and social functioning. Initial severity, psychological reasons for encounter, recency of onset, diagnostic category, and psychiatric comorbidity were related to both better recognition and outcome. However, these variables could not account for the association of recognition with management and outcome, but some did modify the association. A causal model of the relationships is presented and possible reasons for non-recognition and for the beneficial effects of recognition are discussed.

Anxiety Disorders

Psychiatric diagnosis in an outpatient population. A comparative study of PSE-Catego and DSM-III.

Two diagnostic systems are compared in a psychiatric outpatient population of 175 patients. The Present State Examination (PSE)-Catego system identified 121 patients (69%) as "cases," whereas DSM-III identified 152 patients (87%) as cases. The two systems converged in 115 patients, yielding a kappa coefficient of only .32. Approximately one third of the DSM-III cases that were not detected by the PSE-Catego system was due to the restricted coverage of the latter system; the remaining two thirds could be attributed to differences in threshold and time framing. Compared with DSM-III, the PSE-Catego system showed a strong bias toward depression, and the system was extremely insensitive to the detection of social phobias and obsessive-compulsive disorders. Only 58% of cases of depression and 46% of cases of anxiety were diagnosed by both systems. The results are compared with other studies, and some consequences are discussed.

Adult

A cross-cultural comparison of mental health care delivery in Athens and Groningen.

Until recently mental health care in Greece was mainly delivered by old traditional mental hospitals and few outpatient services. In order to induce the process of change the University of Athens started to experiment with a community mental health service. In order to study what has been achieved in a relatively short time, data relating to the delivery of care cohorts of patients from a pilot area in Athens and from an area in the north of the Netherlands were compared. The overall new contact rate was much higher in the Groningen area, except for the category of psychoneuroses and personality disorders. Patients with a psychosis received more intensive treatment and left the services at a later stage in Athens. Differences of patterns of care in other diagnostic and age groups are discussed.

Adult

General practitioners' characteristics and the assessment of psychiatric illness.

We put forward the hypothesis that general practitioners (GPs) with a family medicine orientation are more sensitive to the presence of mental health problems than GPs with a clinical orientation. To test it, GPs were divided into three subgroups on the basis of an attitude questionnaire. The General Health Questionnaire (GHQ) and the Present State Examination (PSE) were used as criteria. No differences in sensitivity to psychiatric illness were observed using either scale. Results of factor analysis with the subscales of the GP attitude questionnaire and the indices 'bias' and 'accuracy' were similar to those reported by GOLDBERG and associates. 'New' patients were defined as patients in whom the GP had not identified a mental health problem (MHP) in the past year. 'Old' patients were defined as 'not new'. GPs tended to under-identify MHPs in 'new' and over-identify them in 'old' patients. Recognition of psychiatric illness was better in 'old' than in 'new' patients. In 'new' patients, recognition depended on psychiatric diagnosis. Among 'old' patients, older people and people (especially women) with low education predominated. In their assessments GPs used information not contained in the GHQ.

Adult

The reliability of diagnostic coding in psychiatric case registers.

In total, 103 cases were randomly selected from the Groningen, Nottingham and South Verona registers. Six raters (two in each of the register areas) were involved in coding these cases according to the ICD-9. In general, interrater agreement was satisfactory when codes were grouped into a limited number of categories. Nevertheless, considerable variation in agreement rates was found. We distinguished three steps in the diagnostic process. The selected logistic model showed that reliability is significantly affected in each step, but only substantial in the first where clinicians formulate a diagnosis.

Adult

Concurrent validity of GHQ-28 and PSE as measures of change.

Substantial cross-sectional correlations have been reported between the GHQ and PSE (and CIS) total scores. Although necessary, this is not a sufficient condition for assuming good validity of the GHQ as a severity measure in longitudinal and health care evaluation studies. For this purpose the GHQ should also accurately reflect changes in severity over time. To examine their concurrent validity, GHQ and PSE scores were compared, in a three-wave longitudinal study, among 175 new psychiatric out-patients. Using a longitudinal structural equation model that takes measurement error into account, the strength of both the cross-sectional and longitudinal relationship between GHQ and PSE were estimated. The GHQ performed remarkably well; changes in severity as defined by PSE-ID and PSE total score were clearly reflected by changes in GHQ scores. The revised scoring method of the GHQ proposed by Goodchild and Duncan-Jones did not yield superior results.

Adult

Knowledge and attitudes of primary health care personnel concerning mental health problems in developing countries: a follow-up study.

Within the context of a World Health Organization coordinated collaborative study health workers in six developing countries were assessed 18 months after their training for improvement in their knowledge and attitude towards mental health problems and their management. The approaches to training varied between study areas, but the degree of improvement following the training, was of equal magnitude in all countries. The training process has formalized the recognition by the health workers that treatment of mental health problems is an integral part of their work.

Attitude of Health Personnel

Use of mental health services in south Verona and Groningen. A comparative case-register study.

A comparison was made of the utilization of mental health services in a psychiatric case register area in Italy (south Verona) and one in the Netherlands (Groningen). All residents living in these areas who contacted a mental health service in 1982 were traced and followed for a period of one year. The year prevalence rates differed considerably (110/10,000 in south Verona and 329/10,000 in Groningen). Rates of single consulters were similar in both areas, while those of chronic inpatients were more than 11 times higher in Groningen than in south Verona. After excluding both single consulters and chronic inpatients, when comparing service consumption according to fixed classes of scores, the category of highest service use accounted for 60% of care provided in Groningen as compared with less than 30% in south Verona. The proportion of total service consumption due to inpatient care was about the same in both areas, but brief admissions were more common in south Verona. Moreover, when service use was considered as a relative construct, about 10% of patients in both areas could be called high users. Finally, long-term patients were more prevalent in Groningen (26%) than in south Verona (13%).

Adolescent

Patterns of care in the field of mental health. Conceptual definition and research methods.

The concept "patterns of care" plays a central role in research focusing on the evaluation of mental health care. It is a concept encompassing a number of dimensions. The primary ingredients are the type, the setting, the intensity and the duration of care. In this paper, a critical survey is provided of a total of 7 classifications or scales of patterns of care. An argument is advanced for developing a more systematic working method within this research area, in which new scales of patterns of care are developed, building on the methodology already in existence. Standardization is urgently needed if comparative research is to yield better results than it has in the past.

Ambulatory Care

Patterns of mental health care in two European areas: Mannheim, Federal Republic of Germany; and Groningen, The Netherlands.

All consecutive cases entering the mental health services cooperating with the cumulative psychiatric case register of Mannheim between 1-31 July 1976 were followed up until the end of June 1978 and compared with the consecutive cases entering the mental health services cooperating with the psychiatric case register of Groningen between 1 January and 1 May 1979. Patterns of in-, day- and outpatient care delivered to these 2 cohorts of patients, who were greater than or equal to 15 years of age, and who had not been in contact with one of the services for at least 6 months prior to entry, were compared by diagnostic category. The most common episode of care was the relatively brief outpatient one. Mixed types of care and chronic cases were more common among patients with a psychosis or an addiction than in other diagnostic categories. Between 6 and 24 months after first contact 76% of the patients in Mannheim and 43% of the patients in Groningen had no more contacts. Between 18 and 24 months after the first contact the percentages had increased to 90 and 72% (respectively). In Groningen a higher percentage of patients received outpatient care only. Although a larger percentage of patients in Mannheim received inpatient care, the accumulation of "new chronic" patients was larger in Groningen, as a result of a greater length of stay in Groningen.

Adult