Abstract

Objective: Substance abuse (SA) is an important issue that attracts more and more attention in the psychiatric area. It is also important that substance misusing take place in psychiatric patients. This study was performed to evaluate substance abuse ratio of inpatients and its relation with psychiatric manifestation. Method: This was a retrospective study evaluating files of all inpatients treated between January 2007 and February 2009 in Sağlık Bakanlığı Erenköy Mental Health Research and Training Hospital in the psychiatric wards. Results: A total of 5524 inpatients were evaluated. It was detected that 203 patients (3.7%) had abused a substance in their life period. Among the SA group, 22.2% were diagnosed as having abuse, 15.8% as dependency, and 18.7% had no diagnosis although they were using substance. According to patients in the remaining group, 13.3% of them used rarely and were not active, and 30% of them believed they were in remission. When the SA ratio of all inpatients according to their psychiatric disorders was investigated, it was found that 5.9% were brief psychotic disorder, 3.9% psychotic disorder not otherwise specified, 3.5% bipolar disorder, 3.2% schizophrenia, 2.6% schizoaffective disorder, 1.5% depressive disorder, and 1.2% anxiety disorder. The most commonly used substance was cannabis. Conclusions: It was found that the ratio of substance abuse was unexpectedly low among psychiatric inpatients. Our results showed that SA was most frequent among patients with psychotic and affective disorder. These results support also the model of primary mental illness with substance abuse at least in psychiatric wards.

Key words: Substance abuse, co-morbidity, inpatients