Background:The role of gender in psychiatry disorders is becoming increasingly important. This study is therefore, aimed at identifying gender pattern of admissions to a public mental health centre with regards to demographic characteristic, psychiatry diagnosis and length of stay on admission. Method: In this retrospective study Hospital records of 388 patients admitted at the psychiatric section of the Federal Medical Centre (FMC) Makurdi, between January, 2004 and December, 2008 were studied for gender differences regarding demographic attributes, length of stay and psychiatry diagnoses. Results: Findings revealed that more men than women were admitted overall. Most men (56%) were less than 30 years old whereas 60.6% of women were within 30-59 years aged bracket. For men the main diagnosis was schizophrenia (30.5%), followed by substance related disorders (16.5%) then depression (14.0%); for women the main diagnosis was also schizophrenia (30.3%), this was followed by depression (24.5%), only one woman was diagnosed with substance related disorder. A statistically significant association was also found between having a personality disorder and being a male (p=0.009). Most female were single and belong to the lowest occupational group. There was no significant difference in the gender distribution of patients with respect to length of stay on admission (p=0.161). Conclusion:The results revealed how psychiatry diagnosis is significantly influence by gender issues. We therefore recommend that; for a more effective psychiatry formulation, it is imperative to pay attention to gender issues that may affect the development of psychopathology.
Background Explicit and implicit memories are conserved but flexible biological tools that nature uses to regulate the daily behaviors of human beings. An aberrant form of the implicit memory is presumed to exist and may be contributory to the pathophysiology of disorders such as tardive syndromes, phantom phenomena, flashback, posttraumatic stress disorders (PTSD), and related disorders. These disorders have posed significant clinical problems for both patients and physicians for centuries. All extant pathophysiological theories of these disorders have failed to provide basis for effective treatment. Objective The objective of this article is to propose an alternative pathophysiological theory that will hopefully lead to new treatment approaches. Methods The author sourced over 60 journal articles that treated topics on memory, and involuntary motor and sensory disorders, from open access journals using Google Scholar, and reviewed them and this helped in the formulation of this theory. Results From the reviews, the author thinks physical or chemical insult to the nervous system can cause defective circuit remodeling, leading to generation of a variant of implicit (automatic) memory, herein called “reflex memory” and this is encoded interoceptively to contribute to these phenomena states. Conclusion Acquired involuntary motor and sensory disorders are caused by defective circuit remodeling involving multiple neural mechanisms. Dysregulation of excitatory neurotransmitters, calcium overload, homeostatic failure, and neurotoxicity are implicated in the process. Sustained effects of these defective mechanisms are encoded interoceptively as abnormal memory in the neurons and the conscious manifestations are these disorders. Extant theories failed to recognize this possibility.
Long duration of hospitalisation has been associated with negative consequences of isolating the patients from their social network, initiating maladaptive patterns in the patients and worsening the burden of care on the relatives. In this particular study, we were interested in determining factors that correlate with length of stay on admission among in-patients receiving psychiatric services in North-Central Nigeria. The prospective study was part of a larger in-patients study conducted on 112 consenting patients admitted in the psychiatric wards of Benue State University Teaching Hospital Makurdi, Federal Medical Centre Makurdi and Jos University Teaching Hospital Jos during the study period. Patients who stayed on hospital admission for more than twenty-eight (28) days were classified as ‘long stay’, conversely, those who were discharged from admission after spending 28 days or less were referred to as ‘short stay’ patients. A total of 112 subjects were recruited for the study, 67(59.8%) were female while 45(40.2%) were male, the mean age was 36.98±11.09 years and 54(48.2%) subjects were still married at the time of the study. Forty-two representing 37.5% of the respondents stayed on admission for more than 28 days. The mean duration of stay was 28.8±24.5 days. Long duration of stay was found to be significantly associated with the quality of intimate partner relationship (p=0.001), years of completed education (p=0.021), age group (p=0.001), nature of psychiatric diagnosis (p=0.014), pharmacotherapy (p=0.001), comorbid physical condition (p=0.001), previous admission (p=0.001), defaulted treatment (p=0.001), frequency of previous episodes (p=0.001) and the number of years a patient has had the mental disorder (p=0.001). We concluded that, assessing duration of stay on admission among in-patients treatment for psychiatric disorders is very necessary.
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