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Psychiatric hospitalization following crime conviction

Background

The hospitalization of psychiatric patients after a crime conviction represents a special and important part of the responsibilities undertaken by the public psychiatric hospitals in Greece. However, the extent of this phenomenon and its implications for the function of these hospitals has not been properly investigated yet.

Materials and methods

Data concerning the period from 10-12-1957 until 31-7-2007 was collected from the archives of the Psychiatric Hospital of Attica - Dafni. The descriptive method was used.

Results

During this period : a) 122 patients (117 males and 5 females) were admitted b) 72 (68 males and 4 females) patients are currently being hospitalized c) for 30 patients (29 males, 1 female) the commitment was withdrawn, d) 4 male patients escaped from the hospital e) 4 male patients were transferred to other psychiatric hospitals f) 12 patients diseased g) the mean duration of the patients' hospitalization up to now is estimated to be 9.8 years g) the shorter hospitalization had a duration of 3 months and 6 days h) the longer hospitalization has a duration of 49 years, 7 months and 21 days and has not yet been terminated i) most of these patients are hospitalized in acute psychiatric wards, due to the absence of specialized departments.

Conclusions

The hospitalization of patients with a psychiatric diagnosis following a crime conviction in the Psychiatric Hospital of Attica exerts a huge influence upon its function. There is a need for specialized forensic departments in the context of this hospital.

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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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Petsas, D., Anagnostou, D., Parashakis, K. et al. Psychiatric hospitalization following crime conviction. Ann Gen Psychiatry 7 (Suppl 1), S239 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1186/1744-859X-7-S1-S239

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/1744-859X-7-S1-S239

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