ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE: To describe structural features, attenders' characteristics and intervention habits in a large sample of Community Mental Health Departments (CMHDs) in Southern Italy. DESIGN AND SETTING: 1) Survey of resources and organization features of collaborating CMHDs; 2) Unreplicated registration of all attenders and of therapeutic interventions during an index week. RESULTS: A self-selected sample of 47 CMHDs in Southern Italy recruited 3845 patients during the last week of October 1992. Participating CMHDs were serving a socially deprived and severely ill population: 45.8% of attenders had 8 years or less of formal education; only 18.9% were employed, 30.9% of diagnoses were of the schizophrenia spectrum group and 23% of the affective disorders group. Sixty-eight per cent of patients were being treated with psychotropic drugs, while only 19% received rehabilitative interventions. The activity of CMHDs were oriented more towards the control of active symptomatology than towards rehabilitation. A significantly higher proportion of patients receiving a schizophrenia-spectrum disorder diagnosis were found in contact during the index week with those CMHDs providing both residential and semiresidential (day-hospital, community center) facilities.
Subject(s)
Community Mental Health Services/statistics & numerical data , Health Care Surveys , Health Services Needs and Demand/statistics & numerical data , Mental Disorders , Patients/statistics & numerical data , State Medicine/statistics & numerical data , Adolescent , Adult , Age Distribution , Aged , Chi-Square Distribution , Community Mental Health Services/classification , Confidence Intervals , Cross-Sectional Studies , Demography , Female , Humans , Italy/epidemiology , Logistic Models , Male , Mental Disorders/epidemiology , Mental Disorders/rehabilitation , Mental Disorders/therapy , Middle Aged , Multivariate Analysis , Odds Ratio , Sampling Studies , Schizophrenia/epidemiologyABSTRACT
The analgesic effect and the tolerability of alpha-methyl-4-(2-thienyl-carbonyl)phenylacetic acid (suprofen, Suprol) 200 mg/ml were compared with lysine acetylsalicylate 0.9 g/2.5 ml; the study included 60 subjects in severe to very severe pain following orthopedic surgery. The trial was performed in randomized single-blind fashion in patients who had given informed consent. The substances were injected into the upper out quadrant; maximally 4 intramuscular injections were given within 2 days. The test population was homogeneous with respect to the anamnestic data. The intensity of pain prior to treatment was comparable in both groups. Statistical analysis of the data revealed that suprofen was at the rating times (15 min to 4 h) significantly superior to the control groups. The investigator's and the patients' final appreciation indicated good to very good effect in 93% of the subjects on suprofen, and in 40 and 47%, respectively, of the patients in the control group. Here, too, suprofen was significantly superior to the reference Substance. Systemic and local tolerability of both drugs was very good. Adverse drug experience (heartburn) occurred in only 1 patient in the control group.
