engleski

Refugees with psychological disturbances and psychiatric hospitalization : when and why?

An important dilemma in the treatment of persons with psychotrauma is whether hospital treatment is necessary or ont. Our two-year experience with a large number of refugees that we encountered in several refugee camps, a counselling office in the community, and a psychiatric hospital, is that certain psychological disturbances present a strong indication for either in or out-patient treatment in a psychiatric hospital. Of the 500 patients treated as in -patients in the Department for General Psychiatry, Vrapče Psychiatric Hospital in Zagreb in 1994, 20.8% were refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina and internally displaced persons from Croatia. More than 60% of them did not have a history of psychiatric disease and treatment before the war, and were hospitalised for PTSD (33.8%), PTSD and alcohol abuse (18.5%), anxiotic-depressive syndrome (24.6%), and dementia (23.1%). We believe that psychiatric treatment in an institution has its place in providing psycho-social support to refugees, particularly when a differentation occurs between the war-traumatised persons that have adapted well to the exile, and those that have developed serious psychological disturbances and/or psychiatric symptoms (suicide, prolonged risk behavior because of alcohol abuse, psycho-physical decompensation). The latter require urgent in-patient psychiatric treatment, usually of psychopharmaceutical type, which may be supported by psychotherapeutic methods.

psychological adaptation, refugees, displaced persons

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