A study report on the effect of COVID-19 pandemic in providing in-and-out-patient psychiatric services in a level-3 COVID hospital.

Background: COVID-19 pandemic disrupted all routine and emergency hospital services, including our out-and-in-patient psychiatric services. Aim: To study the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown in providing in-and-out-patient psychiatric services and the experience of tele-consultation services in our level-3 COVID hospital. Materials and Methods: We conducted a retrospective observational study using an administrative database at psychiatry in-and-out-patient department. All the cases that were reported to us, through emergency Out-Patient Department (OPD) and tele-consultation OPD, from April 2020 to October 2020, were included in the study. Data, thus obtained, were compared with the out-and-in-patient data during the same period on the previous year. Results: During the study period, there was a decline in out-patient registration of patients by 94.5%, and a reduction in admission rate was 75.5%, in comparison with the previous year. During 3 months of tele-consultation service provided, 23.5% of patients had the diagnosis of depression, 21.4% of them had various types of headaches, 15.9% of patients had psychosis, 15.3% had anxiety disorders, and 8.8% had a bipolar-affective disorder. Conclusion: Being a level-3 COVID hospital, our hospital suffered significantly in relation to psychiatric in-and-out-patients attendance and service recipients during the study period of COVID-19 pandemic.

Demographic and clinical correlates of substance abuse comorbidity in schizophrenia.

Seventy patients of schizophrenia were divided into two groups based on the presence or absence of substance abusing history in them. Two groups were compared on various socio-demographic and clinical variables. Thirty-eight (54.3%) patients could be diagnosed as having comorbid alcohol/substance abuse/dependence. Seventeen (24.3%) of them were poly-substance abusers. Comorbid substance abusers were predominantly represented by positive syndrome while non-abusers by negative syndrome. In contrast to the report by the most western researchers, most patients in the present study with a diagnosis of substance abusing schizophrenia were married. Similar study from a developing country is rare in the existing literature.