Sociodemographic and clinical characteristics of psychiatric patients coercively brought to hospitals

In order to clarify the sociodemographic and clinical characteristics of ps ychiatric patients with poor motivation for treatment, we examined patients who were coercively brought to hospitals. Sociodemographic and clinical da ta on 287 inpatients from two private psychiatric hospitals in Japan were r etrospectively analyzed. All patients were in the hospitals on 1 April 1997 and had received treatment prior to this admission. Of these inpatients, 6 7 (23.3%) were coercively brought to hospitals. Multiple logistic regressio n was performed on the data of these patients to identify the factors assoc iated with their resistance to visiting the hospital. From the results of m ultivariate analysis, four characteristics were associated with patients co ercively brought to hospitals, namely medication compliance, receiving regu lar outpatient treatment or not, a history of self-aggression or aggressive behavior towards others, and living arrangements. For patients who had liv ed with relatives before hospitalization, the primary caregiver being a par ental caregiver was associated with patients coercively brought to hospital s, although it was not statistically significant. In addition, agitation wa s associated with patients not coercively brought to the hospital according to multivariate analysis. The present results suggest that psychiatric pat ients with poor motivation are more likely to have poor medication complian ce, to have not received regular outpatient treatment, to have a history of aggressive behavior and to live alone. For patients who lived with their c aregivers prior to hospitalization, poorly motivated patients tended to hav e parental caregivers and were less likely to be agitated.