Profile of psychiatric admissions following police referral in Bahrain

This is a retrospective study of patients admitted via the police to the Psychiatric Hospital in Bahrain during 1989. A high percentage of police admissions were unemployed, single males in their twenties or thirties. They mostly suffered from schizophrenia or substance abuse problems and were arrested because of their abnormal behaviour or being violent. Comparison of these results with corresponding studies in the developed and developing world showed consistency in the demographic data, and causes for the police involvement. The diagnostic categories differed only in their order of frequency form that in the developed countries

Drug usage patterns in a geriatric hospital in Bahrain

This study was conducted in early 1991,in a geriatric hospital in Bahrain. All the 56 inpatients of the Muharraq geriatric hospital were included in the study. A questionnaire was designed in order to collect all the required information. A nurse was appointed and trained for the data collection. Informed consent was obtained from all the patients who participated in this study. The aim was to study their sociodemographic characteristics, patterns of drug prescription and factors that may affect the drug usage. The majority of the studied population were on one or more kind of medication. The number of regularly used medication ranged between 1 to 8 with an average of 2.8 drugs per person. Thirty nine% were on psychotrophic medications and of these 70% were on one or more neuroleptic drugs. Comparison is made between the results of this study with those found in a population of similar age in other parts of the world and differences are discussed