The Psychiatric hospital最新文献

With the realization that acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) is an epidemic, the focus on prevention and treatment of the AIDS patients has intensified. However, there has been a lack of recognition of other potential victims. Specifically, little attention has been paid to the psychological impact of AIDS on healthcare workers who care for AIDS patients and on families of AIDS victims. In addition to confronting the premature dying of a young patient, both healthcare workers and families must confront their own conflicts regarding the stigmatizing nature of AIDS as it relates to the patient's sexuality or drug abuse. Failure to resolve these issues often serves as a major obstacle to the provision of effective medical care and prevents families from providing the essential emotional support that can help patients cope with their illness. Furthermore, failure to resolve family conflicts about the patient's life-style may significantly impair the grieving process and may lead to family disengagement and dissolution. The purpose of this paper is to review the literature on the impact of AIDS on healthcare workers and families, and to propose intervention strategies which will alleviate stress and facilitate appropriate psychological adaptation. "....this dreadful disease is not only killing young people in the prime of life and destroying their familial and social relationships. It is also damaging the bond between the care giver and the patient with AIDS as well."

The following article describes the growing awareness of the need for mental health services for deaf patients, the evolution of a well-defined treatment program and the complexities of implementing a program for the deaf. The initial naivete resulting in misconceptions about program needs are addressed and the attempts to rectify them are presented. Finally, there is a detailed presentation of our first pilot year of functioning and the attendant successes and problems, as well as a description of our first formal year of operation and a critique of our present status.

Previous research has shown that the psychiatric illness and hospitalization of a parent is an event about which children are relatively uninformed. Children typically receive little support from family members and often display disturbances in sleeping, eating, school performance, and interpersonal relationships. In this study, 20 families were interviewed periodically throughout a parent's psychiatric hospitalization to discover how parents describe mental illness and hospitalization to children, children's reactions to those events, and ways parents help their children. Analysis of the data suggests that difficulties for parents and children ease when the hospital supports connections between parents and family members. Staff and parents emphasize that honest communication, listening, visiting the hospitalized parent, dealing with guilt, and consistent caregiving are most helpful. The strong influence of Appalachian culture also promotes care for one's children and kin, and creates tolerance for variations in behavior.

Smoking is an all too common practice. Mounting evidence compels us to see it as an addiction rather than the habit we have conveniently called it. The injurious effect smoking has on the health and life span of hundreds of thousands of people annually is unquestioned. The negative effect nicotine has on the metabolism of medications we commonly use in psychiatry is becoming increasingly known. The call by the American Medical Association to ban all advertising of tobacco also compels our attention as physicians. This paper deals with these matters, and describes the issues considered as well as the preliminary measures taken in a psychiatric hospital to combat nicotine addiction.

AIDS represents a major health problem not only in this country but throughout the world. As a devastating viral infection, its physical symptoms are well recognized. It is now becoming clear that emotional and behavioral symptoms are also major components of the disease. It has been recognized for some time that some of these psychiatric symptoms develop as the patient's emotional response to having a fatal disease; but, it is now also recognized that psychiatric symptoms can be primary manifestations of the illness. What is more, it has been demonstrated that these psychiatric symptoms can be the very first sign of the disease. Accordingly, the role of mental health professionals and psychiatric hospitals in caring for AIDS patients is taking on new significance and is likely to expand greatly.

This paper is a review of the status of research pertaining to the hospital setting and a proposed design for a program of research for psychiatric hospitals. Assessment of patient status, treatment, hospital characteristics, and aftercare settings are reviewed in the first section. The second section presents some possible instruments to measure these factors. The third section deals with the various hypotheses that have been proposed in the literature. The hypotheses are categorized into an overall theory to be tested by a program of research. The final section proposes a research program to test those hypotheses.

As of January 1988, over 51,000 cases of acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS) has been reported to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC). Nearly 90 percent occurred in individuals between 20 and 49 years of age. Approximately 90 percent were in males. Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), the virus that causes AIDS, is transmitted by sexual contact, by exposure to infected blood or blood components, and perinatally from mother to neonate. In the healthcare setting, blood is the body fluid that has been implicated in transmission of HIV to healthcare workers. In 1983, the CDC began an ongoing study to assess the risk to healthcare workers of acquiring HIV infection. Results of the CDC and other prospective studies of healthcare workers indicate that the risk of infection following percutaneous exposure to blood of an HIV-infected patient is less than one percent. CDC recommendations for the prevention of HIV transmission in the healthcare setting emphasize use of universal blood and body fluid precautions. Healthcare workers should consider all patients to be potentially infected with HIV, and appropriate barrier precautions should be used routinely by healthcare workers in caring for all patients in settings where the possibility of exposure to blood or other body fluids is anticipated. Continued emphasis must also be placed on the prevention of needlesticks and other injuries caused by sharp objects.

A psychiatric hospital was called upon to help students deal with the precipitous death of a classmate. A program has since been developed to involve teachers, school counselors, and administrators in identifying students at high risk of suicide and in helping students through the grief process.