Psychiatric emergencies and services availability: a comparison of two hospitals in Rome.

The development of Psychiatric Emergency Services (PES) as an autonomous organization has allowed the registration of urgent request in different urban areas and their correlation with real clinical needs. Our aim was to investigate different patterns of psychiatric emergencies, considering that A) qualitative differences in diagnostic distribution could emerge in relation to the availability of local hospital services; B) gender differences could condition the type of demand. In particular, the availability of services appears to have a modulating effect on the demand: it's possible to deduce that socio-economic factors can influence demand and change over time the epidemiological features of patients availing of PES.