Long-term forensic psychiatric inpatient treatment - review of the selected literature and the analysis of data from the medium secured forensic psychiatry unit

OBJECTIVES

The aim of this study was to perform an analysis of the risk factors of long-term psychiatric detention, defined as a stay in forensic institution exceeding respectively 60 and 84 months, based on data obtained from 150 patients from medium secure forensic psychiatry unit. The discussion was preceded by an analysis of the available literature in this field. The sociodemographic factors, the course of the mental disorder, the characteristic of committed criminal acts, aggressive or self-destructive behavior and the clinical characteristic of the illness in the last 6 months of psychiatric detention were analyzed.

METHODS

A pilot study was based on a retrospective analysis of data from medical records and psychiatric experts' opinions of a cross-sectional nature. Due to the variables' characteristic, the Student's t-tests, Spearman's correlation and the Kruskal-Wallis rank ANOVA were used.

RESULTS

Risk of long-term hospitalization significantly correlated with factors related to the course of the last 6 months of inpatient treatment, including the mental state of patients, the occurrence of aggressive behaviors and the response to pharmacological treatment. There was no significant effect of demographic factors or coexisting addiction to alcohol and psychoactive substances. The risk of long-term psychiatric detention increased with the duration of the illness. There were no correlations with the age of the patients at the time of admission nor number of detentions. The nature of the diagnosis was also not found to be a risk factor.

CONCLUSIONS

Our study is the first systematic attempt to assess the risk factors of long-term psychiatric detention in a group of patients of forensic psychiatry centers in Poland. We hope that the presented results will rise a discussion on the shape of psychiatric care in Poland and encourage further research in this area, as well as they will contribute to the optimization of the treatment process.

Changes in national rates of psychiatric beds and incarceration in Central Eastern Europe and Central Asia from 1990-2019: A retrospective database analysis

Background

Numbers of psychiatric beds (general, forensic, and residential) and prison populations have been considered to be indicators of institutionalisation of people with mental illnesses. The present study aimed to assess changes of those indicators across Central Eastern Europe and Central Asia (CEECA) over the last three decades to capture how care has developed during that historical period.

Methods

We retrospectively obtained data on numbers of psychiatric beds and prison populations from 30 countries in CEECA between 1990 and 2019. We calculated the median of the percent changes between the first and last available data points for all CEECA and for groups of countries based on former political alliances and income levels.

Findings

Primary national data were retrieved from 25 out of 30 countries. Data from international registries were used for the remaining five countries. For all of CEECA, the median decrease of the general psychiatric bed rates was 33•8% between 1990 and 2019. Median increases were observed for forensic psychiatric beds (24•7%), residential facility beds (12•0%), and for prison populations (36•0%). Greater reductions of rates of psychiatric beds were observed in countries with lower per capita income as well as in countries that were formerly part of the Soviet Union. Seventeen out of 30 countries showed inverse trends for general psychiatric beds and prison populations over time, indicating a possible shift of institutionalisation towards correctional settings.

Interpretation

Most countries had decreased rates of general psychiatric beds, while there was an increase of forensic capacities. There was an increase in incarceration rates in a majority of countries. The large variation of changes underlines the need for policies that are informed by data and by comparisons across countries.

Funding

Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo in Chile, grant scheme FONDECYT Regular, grant number 1190613.

Longer than prison? A comparison of length of stay in a medium security hospital and prison for perpetrators of violent crimes other than homicide or attempted homicide

BACKGROUND

Concerns have been raised that people detained in secure hospitals after a criminal act spend longer in a locked institution than people sent to prison for similar offending, but research evidence is scarce and conflicting.

AIMS

To compare the length of secure hospitalisation of people convicted of crimes for which flexible sentencing is allowed with length of time in prison for people serving a prison sentence for similar crimes who were not found mentally ill.

METHODS

A records-based, retrospective study was conducted comparing length of stay of all inpatients in one medium security hospital in Poland, hospitalised between 2014 and 2018, who had been convicted of any interpersonal crime other than homicide or attempted homicide, and data on all sentenced prisoners in Poland on 09.05.2018 convicted of a similar range of offences. Homicide was excluded because, in Poland, it usually attracts a fixed sentence-a life sentence until the 1970s and currently a 25-year imprisonment-so disrupting comparisons.

RESULTS

Eighty-two patients completed their secure hospital stay within the study period or were still hospitalised at the census point 09.05.2018, only 10 of them women. Male patients convicted of stalking or similar threatening offence or 'mistreatment' spent, on average, almost twice as long confined to hospital than men sentenced to imprisonment spent in prison (28.8 months, respectively). By contrast, men hospitalised after sex offences were confined for over three years less than those sentenced to prison. Only bodily harm offences attracted comparable lengths of stay in hospital and prison.

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings confirm significant disparities in length of time spent in a closed institution after offences of serious interpersonal violence, according to whether that institution was prison or hospital, but not all in the same direction. Next steps should explore reasons for this and relative longer-term outcomes.

Treatment resistance and prolonged length of stay among schizophrenia inpatients in forensic institutions

Patients suffering from schizophrenia spectrum disorders are the largest group of forensic inpatients worldwide, therefore the identification of factors that influence how long service users experiencing schizophrenia spend in forensic hospitals is one of the most important research areas in forensic psychiatry. Methods: Analysis of data of 87 schizophrenia inpatients, hospitalized in a medium secure forensic unit. Results: Mental disorders among family members, alcohol or substance dependence diagnosis, the severity of the criminal behavior demonstrated by homicide/homicide attempts and features of treatment resistance as persistent psychotic symptoms and current treatment with >1 antipsychotics was proven to influence the length of stay (LoS).

Polish Experiences of Safety Measures Involving Forensic Psychiatric Inpatients Implemented During the SARS-CoV-2 Pandemic

The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has made it necessary for us to adapt our healthcare systems to a very different sort of reality. This clearly also applies to psychiatric services. The restrictions and safeguards associated with the pandemic particularly concern adherence to social distancing and medical treatment safety procedures. The implementation of these procedures is generally complicated by conditions of forensic psychiatry where, in line with demands made by courts, the treatment and isolation of mentally unwell offenders must be carefully managed. In most countries, forensic psychiatric treatment is an inpatient service where patients are kept in restricted and cramped spaces, making social distancing difficult to implement as patients participate in compulsory group therapeutic activities. As a result, it is necessary to introduce unique recommendations relating to patient safety and treatment adapted to the realities of forensic psychiatry. All this requires the implementation of additional restrictions, over and above those arising from the essential aspects of forensic psychiatry. In this paper, we present and discuss the Polish guidelines for forensic psychiatric care during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, developed as a result of discussions on essential measures introduced to reduce the spread of the virus and the unique needs of the forensic patient population.

Attitudes Towards ECT: A Survey of Polish Mental Health Professionals

BACKGROUND

Although the efficacy of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) has been well established, the utilization rate of ECT has decreased in Poland in recent years. One of the main reasons could be the negative attitude towards ECT in the community and by mental health professionals. The aim of this study was to assess the knowledge about and attitudes toward ECT in Polish mental health professionals including psychiatrists and non-physicians: nurses, psychologists, social workers.

SUBJECTS AND METHODS

Psychiatrists and other mental health professionals in two large Polish hospitals were approached to participate in the survey by completing a 28-item questionnaire. The specific hospitals have been selected due to the fact that they were located in the same province of Poland (Mazowsze), had similar catchment area and profile, provided similar mental health services with only one exception; one offered ECT while the other did not. Of the 185 questionnaires that had been distributed, 165 were completed yielding a response rate of 89.19%. The study population consists of 85 psychiatrists and trainees and 80 non-physicians.

RESULTS

Psychiatrists did not differ from other mental health professionals with respect to the knowledge and attitudes toward ECT. However, there were significant differences in the attitude (9.1±3.8 vs 7.1±3.3; p<0.001) and knowledge (5.9±3.8 vs 2.8±4.1; p<0.001) scores between those professionals, who have ever worked in a psychiatric ward where they could observe ECT sessions and those who have not had such an opportunity.

CONCLUSIONS

Frequent witnessing of ECT sessions seems to be the most effective educational intervention to change negative attitudes towards ECT.

Factors Influencing Length of Stay of Forensic Patients: Impact of Clinical and Psychosocial Variables in Medium Secure Setting

OBJECTIVES

Forensic psychiatric care has two, often contradictory, aims-the treatment of mentally ill offenders and the isolation of the perpetrators to ensure public safety. It is essential to ensure that any periods of liberty deprivation do not last longer than necessary to provide appropriate treatment. Therefore, identifying the factors affecting the length of stay (LoS) is one of the most important research areas in the forensic psychiatry. The literature on this subject is scarce and to date there no data available on LoS for patients in Eastern or Central European patients.

METHODS

We conducted a retrospective analysis of data for 150 inpatients in a medium secure unit. Based on a literature review and clinical experience, variables potentially influencing LoS were identified and included in the analysis.

RESULTS

The variables that were significantly associated with LoS included duration of mental illness; severity of index offense; whether a crime was committed as a result of hallucinations or during drug treatment discontinuation; if the index offenses was a continuous crime (crimes committed over an extended period of time); persistent psychosis; multiple antipsychotic treatments; as well as a diagnosis of schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder.

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings are highly consistent with observations made by other researchers. However, contrary the majority of previous studies our project incorporates data concerning the clinical presentation of patients. For example, we demonstrate that variables measuring treatment resistance might be one of the crucial determinants of LoS, which is a novel research finding.

Symptomatic differences and symptoms stability in unipolar and bipolar depression. Medical charts review in 99 inpatients

OBJECTIVES

Misdiagnosis of bipolar disorder may result in a non-optimal treatment, higher servicecosts and increase in the patient's suffering and risk of suicidal behavior. Lack of clinically approved and suitable for widely use biomarkers of BD led clinicians to focus on clinical course and symptomatology of depression in BD. The aim of this study was the retrospective evaluation of symptomatic differences and symptoms stability between MDD and BD patients during three subsequent depressive episodes in the inpatient setting.

METHODS

Retrospective chart review of 99 patients with diagnosis of MDD and BD during three subsequent depressive episodes. Chi-squared test and logistic regression was used to analyze the symptomatic profile. Cohen's kappa value used to estimate symptoms stability.

RESULTS

Statistical differences were observed in the case of 7 out of 22 depressive symptoms. Somatization (pain and non-pain complains), psychomotor agitation and pathological guilt were more frequent in MDD patients. Anhedonia, attention deficit, and suicidal ideation were more frequent in BD group. In MDD group relatively highest symptom stability was observed for somatization, middle insomnia, early wakening, and attention deficit. In BD group relatively highest symptom stability was observed for delusions, somatization (pain and non-pain complains), initial and middle insomnia, memory disturbance, psychomotor retardation, and pathological guilt.

CONCLUSIONS

The observed symptomatic differences may be an additional factor of MDD/DB differential diagnosis. Lower than previously reported symptoms stability highlights the need to evaluate more than one depressive episode in differential diagnosis.

European Psychiatric Association (EPA) guidance on forensic psychiatry: Evidence based assessment and treatment of mentally disordered offenders

Forensic psychiatry in Europe is a specialty primarily concerned with individuals who have either offended or present a risk of doing so, and who also suffer from a psychiatric condition. These mentally disordered offenders (MDOs) are often cared for in secure psychiatric environments or prisons. In this guidance paper we first present an overview of the field of forensic psychiatry from a European perspective. We then present a review of the literature summarising the evidence on the assessment and treatment of MDOs under the following headings: The forensic psychiatrist as expert witness, risk, treatment settings for mentally disordered offenders, and what works for MDOs. We undertook a rapid review of the literature with search terms related to: forensic psychiatry, review articles, randomised controlled trials and best practice. We searched the Medline, Embase, PsycINFO, and Cochrane library databases from 2000 onwards for adult groups only. We scrutinised publications for additional relevant literature, and searched the websites of relevant professional organisations for policies, statements or guidance of interest. We present the findings of the scientific literature as well as recommendations for best practice drawing additionally from the guidance documents identified. We found that the evidence base for forensic-psychiatric practice is weak though there is some evidence to suggest that psychiatric care produces better outcomes than criminal justice detention only. Practitioners need to follow general psychiatric guidance as well as that for offenders, adapted for the complex needs of this patient group, paying particular attention to long-term detention and ethical issues.

[Effectiveness of ketamine in depressed patients resistant to ECT or rTMS therapy]

OBJECTIVES

In the last decade several authors described a robust and clinically relevant alleviation of depressive symptoms after infusions of the uncompetitive N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) glutamate receptor antagonist - ketamine. In the majority of published reports ketamine was administrated to patients with depression resistant to pharmacotherapy, but not to ECT. We present a series of 5 subjects suffering from multimodal treatment-resistant depression (including ECT or rTMS and various medications) treated with intravenous infusions of ketamine in a subanesthetic dose of 0.5 mg/kg in the naturalistic setting. To the best of our knowledge it is the first report on ketamine infusion in patient resistant to antidepressants and r

TMS METHODS

Two subjects have been diagnosed with MDD, one with BD, two with severe depressive episode. The efficacy and possible adverse events were monitored using psychometric scales. Basic life parameters and ECG were observed.

RESULTS

Ketamine's infusions showed transient antidepressant efficacy. Improvement rate in our group was significant lower than in previously reported. Ketamine was generally well tolerated. We noted transient BP variations and appearance of mild and transient dissociative symptoms. Low early response rate may be correlated with resistance to previous multimodal treatment, high rate of somatization and anxiety comorbidity or heterogeneity of our group.

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings do not support the use of ketamine infusions as the monotherapy in the subgroup of patients with multimodal treatment resistant depression.

[Antidepressant effect of ketamine, a N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) glutamate receptor antagonist, in the therapy of treatment-resistant depression]

Clinical practice and data from literature indicate that up to 30% of the patients suffering from depression meet criteria for treatment-resistant depression. In the past decade, interest in the use of NMDA receptor modulators in the treatment of treatment-resistant depression is increasing. The use of ketamine--an noncompetitive antagonist of the NMDA receptors, allows some patients suffering from treatment resistant depression to achieve rapid and significant improvement. The authors reviewed results of clinical studies, series of cases and case reports on the use of ketamine. Most of the patient suffered from the treatment-resistant major depression. Neurobiological basis of the glutaminergic pathways and the postulated role of glutamate in mood modulation have been described, as well as possible adverse events associated with ketamine infusion. Concerns relate to the optimal dosage, frequency of administration, long-term safety and efficacy of the therapy. Interesting results of the published articles encourage further studies on therapeutic use of NMDA receptor modulators in the treatment of treatment-resistant depression.