An issue of equity of care: Psychiatric patients must be treated 'on par' with medical patients

摘要

Emergency departments across the country are seeing a significant increase in the number of psychiatric patients presenting for treatment (1). From 1992 to 2001, emergency departments recorded some 53 million mental health-related visits, which reflects an increase from 4.9% to 6.3% of all emergency department visits for that period and an increase of 17.1 to 23.6 visits per 1,000 in the population. There are many reasons for this increase, including closures of inpatient psychiatric beds, reductions in the number of outpatient services, and limited availability of psychiatric personnel in the community.