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