A study of the inpatient service of a Nigerian psychiatric hospital

Psychiatric hospitals and psychiatric units of teaching hospitals are gradually replacing the “civil asylums” in prisons, for the care of mentally ill patients in Nigeria.According to Boroffka,¹ 15 of such asylums still exist in addition to eight psychiatric hospitals and four psychiatric units situated in teaching hospitals. The phasing out of these asylums is due partly to the availability of more effective treatment for mental disorders and increasing numbers of psychiatrists in the country.Apart from Anumonye² and Jegede and Adaranijo,³ who have described the pattern of psychiatric practice in a psychiatric unit of a teaching hospital with four beds, no comprehensive information exists on the types of psychiatric patients requiring admission, either for a long- or a short-term stay and the management pattern and the relationship of such management to the underlying psychiatric illness. The present study is a preliminary report of a long-term longitudinal study, which aims at investigating both of the above problems, using the inpatients of a large psychiatric hospital.