[Admission patterns of patients with dementia to psychiatric hospitals. A registry study over the period 1972-1988].

This paper describes the admission and discharge pattern in Danish psychiatric hospitals for first-ever admitted demented patients (290, 293.09, 293.19 ICD-8) aged 65 years and over admitted in the period 1972 to 1988. The results are based on data from the Danish Psychiatric Register. The admission rate, the commitment rate and the length of stay decreased significantly from 1972 to 1988. The readmission frequency did not change during the period. A significantly increasing proportion of the patients were admitted from somatic hospitals, and there was a tendency to a higher discharge rate to somatic hospitals. Two factors may have caused the decline in admission rate, the improvement of the psychogeriatric services in the eighties and the decline in the number of psychiatric beds. The psychiatric hospitals no longer serve as nursing homes for demented patients. The results also seem to indicate that for institutional care for demented patients may have been transferred from the psychiatric hospitals to other services e.g. the somatic departments and nursing homes.