Involuntary placement in Italy

A. Barbato

Unit of Epidemiology and Social Psychiatry, Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research, Via Eritrea 62, 20157 Milan, Italy. E-mail: dirba{at}tin.it

B. D'Avanzo

Unit of Epidemiology and Social Psychiatry, Mario Negri Institute for Pharmacological Research, Via Eritrea 62, 20157 Milan, Italy.

EDITED BY KHALIDA ISMAIL

Salize & Dressing (2004) show figures for various indicators for involuntary placements in psychiatric facilities in the European Union countries. According to the authors, Italy was unable to provide nationwide data from the 1990s. Therefore, in Table 1 they showed data from the Lombardy region, concerning only the percentage of in-patient episodes that were involuntary placements for an ‘unknown year’. Data from Lombardy on number and rate of involuntary placements per 100 000 population are indicated as ‘not available’.


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Table Involuntary placement in Italy
 

Actually, nationwide data have been published up to 1997, and data from the Lombardy region are available for the period 1995-2001 (see Table). The Italian data can be found on the website of the National Institute of Statistics (http://www.istat.it/Societ-/Sanita-e-p/Storico) and those of Lombardy on the website of the Regional Directorate of Health (http://www.sanita.regione.lombardia.it/documenti).

Also, Salize & Dressing report a rate of 11 involuntary placements per 100 000 for France. This is not correct, as can be seen looking at absolute numbers of 61 063 involuntary admissions in France. Given the French population of about 59.3 million, the correct rate is 103 per 100 000 population.

REFERENCES

Salize, H. J. & Dressing, J. (2004) Epidemiology of involuntary placement of mentally ill people across the European Union. British Journal of Psychiatry, 184, 163 -168.[Abstract/Free Full Text]