Short CommunicationPrevalence of substance use in a Swiss psychiatric hospital: Interview reports and urine screening
Section snippets
Background
Co-morbid substance use is common in psychiatric disorders. Compared to 17% in the general population, lifetime rates of substance abuse may rise to 47% for schizophrenic patients and 56% for bipolar patients (Regier et al., 1990). Recent reviews report a 9–36% substance use among psychiatric patients, depending on the setting and criteria for substance abuse definitions (Cantor-Graae et al., 2001, Modestin et al., 1997). Studies reported that patients with psychosis who used substances spent
Design and setting
The study was performed during a twelve month period at the Lausanne University Adult Psychiatric Hospital, which is a 107 bed hospital providing full inpatient care for a 240′000 inhabitant catchment area. Non-psychiatric patients were recruited at the Department of Surgery of the University Hospital of Lausanne. Patients of either sex who were well enough to consent and to cooperate were included. The design was two-fold: 1) cross sectional prevalence survey of substance use among every
Results
392 psychiatric patients were asked to participate to the study, 105 refused and 21 were unable to give an informed consent and excluded. 238 patients agreed to be interviewed; 28 consented to urine screening only; and 212 agreed for both urine samples and interviews. Socio-demographic data of the 238 interviewed patients are given on Table 1.
Socio-demographic and clinical factors associated with illegal substance use were male sex, unmarried status, nicotine smoker, absence of professional
Discussion
Prevalence rates of substance and alcohol abuse among Lausanne psychiatric inpatients were found to be as high as those recently found in other studies (Cantor-Graae et al., 2001, Fowler et al., 1998, Modestin et al., 1997, Mueser et al., 2000). Frequency of lifetime use was 20–25% for cocaine or opiates, 86–98% for alcohol or benzodiazepines and 53% for cannabis. The substances most frequently, currently and regularly used were alcohol (32%) and cannabis (17%), but regular use of opiates or
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to the psychiatric and chirurgical nursing staff for their help in the inclusion of patients. This study was supported in part by the Quality Funds of the Hospices du Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois and Roche Diagnostics Schweiz AG supplied reagents for drug analysis in urine at reduced costs.
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2020, Journal of Psychiatric ResearchCitation Excerpt :We found the reported global point prevalence of cannabis use to be around 25%. Approximately 40% of individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders and 25% diagnosed with bipolar or unipolar affective disorders disclosed regular cannabis use the week before admission, similar to what has been previously reported (Bonsack et al., 2006; Cervilla et al., 2018; Colizzi et al., 2018; Hansen et al., 2000; Hunt et al., 2018; Mueser et al., 2000). Furthermore, on the bivariate analyses we found that patients who reported cannabis consumption the week before admission had significantly higher BPRS scores compared to non-users, although no statistically significant difference was found in the multivariate analyses.
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