Abstract
BACKGROUND: Physical injury has been associated with the development of several psychopathological manifestations. Less is known about the use of psychiatric medication in those patients. OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to explore the use of psychiatric medication by patients been admitted in a rehabilitation center in a tertiary care teaching hospital and to inquire for the correlations of such drug administration. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The sample consisted of 127 patients who had been admitted to a rehabilitation center, being in the postacute phase of their condition during a 2-year period. Patients' medical records were searched for the demographic and clinical information. RESULTS: Analysis was performed for 118 patients, mostly men (62.7%) with the mean age of 57.5 years. About 43.2% of patients (n = 51) were referred for psychiatric consultation, and 39.8% (n = 47) were prescribed a psychiatric drug. Traumatic brain injury was the diagnosis, positively correlated to referral. Twenty-seven out of the 67 nonreferred patients (40.3%) were prescribed psychiatric regimens by physicians. Nearly 38.1% of patients were diagnosed with a psychiatric disorder by the consultation-Liaison psychiatric service. CONCLUSIONS: In a rehabilitation center, psychiatric drug administration is common practice and drugs may be prescribed by the center's physicians and by psychiatrists. Such a drug prescription was found to be correlated to referral to the consultation-Liaison psychiatric service.
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Association for Helping Neurosurgical Sick People. This is an open
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This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the
Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives License, which
permits unrestricted reproduction and distribution, for non-commercial
purposes only; and use and reproduction, but not distribution, of
adapted material for non-commercial purposes only, provided the original
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