Effects of a Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit

Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Status: Completed

Conditions: Mental Disorders

Treatments: Procedure: Care in whole acute unit; Procedure: Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT00184119

AEV-01

Details and patient eligibility

About

The purpose of the study is to compare the effects of using or not using a Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) in an acute psychiatric department.

Full description

The main aim of the study is to compare the effects of using or not using a Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU) in an acute psychiatric department.The acute ward of Østmarka psychiatric department, St. Olavs Hospital has a PICU separated from the rest of the ward. The PICU is separated with a locked door. Under two different conditions at different times all patients evaluated to be in need of PICU were admitted to the PICU. In the first condition the doors inside the PICU and between the rest of the acute ward and PICU were closed or locked. In the second condition the doors inside the PICU and the door between the PICU and the rest of the acute ward were either removed or held permanently open. In the second condition the patients thus were admitted to a PICU unit not using PICU principles.

The patients were evaluated with different rating scales at admittance, day three and at discharge from PICU.

Enrollment: 118 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 18 to 110 years old

Volunteers: No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• All patients admitted to Østmarka psychiatric department, St. Olavs Hospital in need of a PICU.

Exclusion criteria

• Patients with dementia or mental retardation to an extensive degree.
• Patients not speaking Norwegian or English.

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Non-Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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118 participants in 2 patient groups

Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit

Experimental group

Treatment:

Procedure: Psychiatric Intensive Care Unit

Whole acute unit

Active Comparator group

Treatment:

Procedure: Care in whole acute unit