POLICE REFERRALS TO AN URBAN PSYCHIATRIC EMERGENCY ROOM IN ISRAEL

The movement toward community psychiatric care brought greater involve ment of policemen in incidents involving subjects suffering from psych iatric disorders. The psychiatric emergency room (PER) has become a me eting-point of the police and the mental health system. The object of the study was to characterize subjects brought to Israel's largest PER by policemen and to assess their hospital stay. All referrals by poli cemen during the period May 1991-November 1992 were evaluated. A compa rison group of non-police referrals for the same period was used as a control group. Policemen referred mostly adult males, not married (82. 5%), with up to 12 years of education, who were suffering from schizop hrenia. It appears that policemen refer a subgroup described in the li terature as 'new chronic patients'.