Psychiatric Emergencies of Asylum Seekers; Descriptive Analysis and Comparison with Immigrants of Warranted Residence - Schoretsanitis, G.; Eisenhardt, S.; Ricklin, M. E.; Srivastava, D. S.; Walther, S.; Exadaktylos, A. (Int J Environ Res Public Health, 2018)
Background: The aim of our study was to assess utilization patterns of psychiatric services by asylum seekers. Methods: We included 119 adults who presented themselves at the University Emergency Department between 1 March 2012 and 1 January 2017 for psychiatric consultation. Descriptive data were compared with a control group of non-Swiss individuals with warranted residence permits using Mann-Whitney-U and chi square (χ(2)) tests. Results: Patients were mainly single, male, residing in reception centers, and presented themselves most frequently due to suicidal ideation. Almost 60% of the patients were assigned to inpatient treatments, with 28 involuntary cases. Compared to the control group, asylum seekers were younger and more often men (p < 0.001 for both). Further, they less often had family in Switzerland (χ(2) = 9.91, p = 0.007). The proportion of patients coming in as walk-ins was significantly higher in the control group than in asylum seekers (χ(2) = 37.0, p < 0.001). Asylum seekers were more frequently referred due to suicidal ideation and aggressive behavior than participants in the control group (χ(2) = 80.07, p < 0.001). Diagnoses for asylum seekers infrequently included mood, as they often reported stress-related disorders (χ(2) = 19.6, p = 0.021) and they were infrequently released home (χ(2) = 9.19, p = 0.027). Conclusion: Asylum seekers more frequently demonstrated severe symptoms such as suicidal ideation and aggressive behavior and they were mainly treated as inpatients, potentially due to minimal social resources.
Keywords: journalArticle; *Suicidal Ideation; Adult; Emergency Services, Psychiatric/*statistics & numerical data; Emigrants and Immigrants/*psychology; Female; Hospitalization/*statistics & numerical data; Humans; Male; Refugees/*psychology; Switzerland; Young Adult; asylum seekers; authors declare no conflicts of interest; involuntary treatment; psychiatric emergency services; psychiatric hospitalization; speaker in educational programs from Eli Lilly, Janssen, Lundbeck, and Otsuka. He; was an advisory board member for Lundbeck and Otsuka from 2015 to 2016. All other