News Release

Depression With Physical Illness Doubles Psychiatric Hospital Stays

Peer-Reviewed Publication

Center for Advancing Health

Psychiatric patients hospitalized for depression stay twice as long in the hospital if they have a physical illness as well, researchers report.

It is well established that length of stay for medical patients increases significantly when they also have mental or emotional disorders, particularly depression, but a new study by Denise M. Sloan, PhD, and colleagues at Case Western Reserve University, published in the February issue of Psychosomatic Medicine, shows that length of hospitalization for psychiatric patients is also significantly increased when they are experiencing physical illnesses.

The study is one of the few investigations into the existence of physical illness among psychiatric patients and its impact on hospital length of stay, according to Sloan, now at the University of Florida.

Their primary purpose, the researchers said, was to determine which psychiatric groups are most affected by physical illness and to "increase our knowledge of how to most effectively treat psychiatric patients."

Sloan's team surveyed diagnostic records of 2,323 psychiatric patients admitted to a psychiatric hospital in Cleveland between 1987 and 1992. They chose that period, they said, because managed care policies had not yet exerted major influence on hospital length-of-stay.

Managed care would have added "a substantial confounding variable" to the study if a more recent period had been examined, the researchers said.

For patients with psychiatric diagnoses other than depression, an additional physical illness had little effect on their how long they were hospitalized, the researchers found. They gathered data on patients with psychosis, personality disorder, anxiety, adjustment disorder, bipolar disorder and "other disorders" including substance abuse and eating disorders.

Preliminary examination of the types of physical illness did not reveal any substantial differences between depressed patients and the other psychiatric groups. However, Sloan and her colleagues note that the type and severity of physical illness needs to be studied further.

Overall, combining the results from all psychiatric groups, the average length of stay was 20.1 days for patients with physical as well as psychiatric diagnoses compared to 16.63 days for patients with no physical diagnoses.

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Psychosomatic Medicine is the official peer-reviewed journal of the American Psychosomatic Society, published bimonthly. For information about the journal, contact Joel E. Dimsdale, MD, editor-in-chief, at 619-543-5468.

Posted by the Center for the Advancement of Health http://www.cfah.org. For information about the Center, call Richard Hebert, rhebert@cfah.org, 202-387-2829.



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