International Journal of Emergency Mental Health and Human Resilience
Open Access

To Study the Pattern of Delay in Referral of Patients with Psychiatric Disorders

Abdul M Gania, Sajid M Wani, Ajaz A Suhaff^*, Abdul W Khan, Nizam-UD-Din and M Abrar

Department of Psychiatry, SKIMS Medical College, Bemina, Jammu and Kashmir, India

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Copyright: © 2020  . This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

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Objectives: To determine the various methods of seeking treatment by patients with mental illness that cause time delay in seeking health care in a tertiary care hospital and time delay caused by such practices among the patients. Methodology: This descriptive study was conducted in patients attending psychiatry OPD of SKIMS Medical College, Bemina Srinagar. For current study the data was collected by using a semi structured questionnaire on basic of demographic information, the duration of illness and the various methods of seeking treatment for the illness. A detailed history was elicited from relatives also to ensure completion of data. Patients will be diagnosed using ICD-10 (International Classification of Disease, 10th edition) classification of mental and behavioral disorder. Results: In our study majority of the patients were in the age group of 21-34 years (46.4%) females (62%), belonging to rural area (76.8%) married (67.5%). As far as duration of the illness is concerned 50.2% patients had duration of illness 1-5 years followed by 29.5% 6-10 years, 20.3% >10 years. Physicians were the first contact of the majority of the patients (33%) followed by faith healers (18.2%), neurologists (16%), psychiatrist (11.4%), gastroenterologist (4.7%) and dermatologist (3.4%). In our study time lapse for the patients in consulting psychiatrist was 41.3% less than 1 year followed by 35.9 % 1-5 years, 16.5% 6-10 years, 6.3% More than 10 years. 81.8% of the patients believed that symptoms were due to medical illness and 18.2% had believed that symptoms as spiritual illness. Conclusion: The results of the study showed a significant delay in seeking psychiatric treatment. First contact was with non-psychiatric clinicians or physicians followed by faith healers. To avoid delay in psychiatric treatment of the patients which has negative consequences for the patients themselves, physicians or non-psychiatric clinicians should review their referral practice and refer patients with mental problems to the psychiatrists much more often and much earlier.

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