Patterns in the Delivery of Psychiatric Care in Saskatchewan 1971–1972: Part III: Patient Socio-Demographic and Medical Characteristics

Abstract

This paper is one of several examining he variety of patterns in the delivery of psychiatric health care in the Province of Saskatchewan during 1971 and 1972. Previous papers dealt with an overview of service sectors, patient volumes, types of contacts and some patients career characteristics. This paper deals with sociodemographic and medical characteristics of patients treated in the various sectors of the psychiatric care delivery system in Saskatchewan. The private and public psychiatric care delivery systems deal with essentially separate psychiatric populations. These differ in volume, in type of psychiatric disorder, in socio-demographic characteristics and in patient career characteristics. The “private” sector saw proportionately more females in the 20-39 year age group, whereas the public sector saw proportionately more males and females in the 0-19 year age category. The “private” sector also treated more people in rural, village and town areas whereas the public sector appeared to be more city-based. General practitioners were more active in rural and small towns, while psychiatrists tended to be more active in the larger urban areas. This reflects the general practitioner's role as a primary health care source. The vast majority of private sector patients were seen for neurotic and psychosomatic disorders. The public sector patients included those treated for the more intractable schizophrenic, organic, affective, and neurotic depression diagnoses. Comparative data on both the private and public sectors show considerable increases in the volume of services being delivered. Previous data demonstrate a relatively strong relationship between availability of psychiatric services and utilization rates within a region. It would appear that the presence of a psychiatric inpatient facility serves an educative function and increases the volume of general practitioner treatment for psychiatric problems. The present data indicate that the majority of persons seen for psychiatric reasons by medical practitioners in Saskatchewan suffer from relatively minor psychiatric ailments. Therefore, we must question the suitability of the present service delivery system. Is there a need to screen out “medical problems” from “problems of living” which may be better treated by non-medically-oriented counselling services, thus freeing some of the medically-skilled manpower to focus on better and more comprehensive care for the more intractable mental disorders?