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Study on the Greek demographic chart of psychic disorders

An Erratum to this article was published on 13 February 2017

Background

This study is an attempt to review and examine issues concerning the prevention of mental disorder such as the network in Greek provinces and urban cities in relation to the family system.

Materials and methods

We investigated 60 cases (from 1998 until 2005), both from urban centers and provinces, randomly selected from those who contacted Association of Psychology and Psychiatry for Adults and children (A.P.P.A.C.) for diagnostic and therapeutic reasons. Patients were grouped by age (0-18, 19-35, over 36), sex and according to the ICD-9 diagnostic criteria.

Results

According to the statistical analysis of data derived from 60 medical reports, we found that the first part of the hypothesis was confirmed. As we saw, 83,3 % of the patients that came in A.P.P.A.C. have their permanent residence in urban areas. As far as the diagnosis is concerned, we have found that 78.3 % of the patients were diagnosed as psychotic, neurotic or depressive. However the third part of our original hypothesis was not verified, since only 35% were over 36 years old. The majority of the patients (43.3%) were in the age cohort : 19-35.

Conclusions

Data collected shows that a major problem is the stigmatization of the psychiatric patient. Unfortunately, these patients, when visiting the therapeutic center seldom have already serious mental disturbance, which could have been avoided. On top of that the Greek social surrounding and family system do not allow the therapeutic intervention easily because the structure of the system is rigid. This rigidity leads them to see psychiatric help as a failure for the family. Information Greek people have about psychiatric and clinical work and therapy is distorted and very poor. In recent study 33.7% of Greek people ignore the essence of psychic help and 30% do not know diseases, caused by mental disturbances. However, 77% would like to learn more about this issue. The rapid disintegration of the traditional Greek community probably accounts for increased cases of mental disorder. Hence, it is essential to view individuals and families as biopsychosocial systems with certain structural characteristics and patterns of transaction, who can provide guidelines to set therapeutic goals.

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An erratum to this article is available at http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12991-017-0130-x.

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Open Access This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Kouros, J., Kotta, D. & Karkanis, A. Study on the Greek demographic chart of psychic disorders. Ann Gen Psychiatry 7 (Suppl 1), S327 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1186/1744-859X-7-S1-S327

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/1744-859X-7-S1-S327

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