Noncompliance and its Causes Resulting in Psychiatric Readmissions

Objective: We aimed to describe psychiatristsʹ attributions on non-compliance related issues resulting in re-hospitalizations of psychiatric patients. Method: In a cross sectional study, we included 500 randomly selected psychiatric readmitted patients and registered their demographic data (including age, sex, job, marital status, and educational level), and psychiatric clinical data (including diagnosis, medications, and presence of psychiatric disorders in family members). Possible noncompliance issues by means of type and causes were asked through a structured interview by a psychiatrist. Results: Non-compliance was reported as a possible cause of admission in 441 (88.2) of the re-hospitalized cases. No insight to disease (n=295; 59%), and feeling of cure (n=138; 27.6%) were the 2 most prevalent causes for noncompliance of the patients . Conclusion: It seems that non-compliance, as a prevalent factor, possibly causes readmission in psychiatric wards. Providing a better insight to disease and to instruct patients to take their medications even if they have some feeling of cure is important to decrease such problems.