A Survey on Community dwelling Mentally Ill Patients Who could not be Accessed by a Community Health Center

Reu, Jeong Suk; Kim, Myung Hee; Jeong, Chu Young

Abstract

PURPOSE
The purpose of this study was to identify the frequency and status of mentally ill patients who registered in a community health center (CHC) but they could not be accessed.
METHODS
A total of 233 mentally ill individuals who were registered to a CHC in B Metropolitan City participated in this survey. Data were collected from December 1 to 31, 2010 and analyzed.
RESULTS
There were 140 (60.1%) community dwelling mentally ill patients who had been registered to that CHC but were not accessible. The major reasons of this inaccessibility were patients' rejection to be accessed (27.1%) and the wrong or missing address in hospital's discharge note (22.9%). The nursing problems of the subjects were rejection of medication (93.4%); poor personal hygiene (85.8%); violence including harassment of family member(s), assault, property destruction, threat with weapon (38.7%); and so on. Among 159 cases of referrals and requests for help immediate action with patient's compliance were only 8.8%.
CONCLUSION
The findings show that mentally ill patients who had registered to the CHC but were not able to be accessed failed to be managed properly. This would become risk factors of social problems which threat to the community as well as individuals. Thus, we need to prepare programs for this population to make them take medicine at a minimum.