精神科病棟入院患者の家族意識調査 ： 特に入院時症状と家族の態度について

Abstract

A New Mental Health Law became effective as of July 1988. With this as a turning point, the authors investigated the views of families who must care for inpatients admitted to the psychiatric ward of Nara Medical University Hospital at this time by means of a questionairre solicited by mail. We considered that this was a good time to study the families' views of their own relatives, because the New Law changed many provisions of the Old Law (Mental Hygiene Law), including the admission form. The aim of this investigation was to elucidate what factors affected the families' attitudes to the patients, though there were previously few studies in this field. As a result, 38 families (47.5%) gave answers and only 16 of them (42.1%) manifested willingness to receive their relatives if they could be discharged. There was no association between these families' attitudes and the patients' sex, age, number of admissions, and family relationship. However there was a remarkable difference in the families' reception between shortterm (under 1 year) and long-term (more than 1 year) admission groups. Furthermore, patients' families showed a significantly stronger rejection reaction when the patient had at least one symptom such as violence, wastefulness, runaway from home, wandering, or the possibility of suicide at admission, than those whose relatives had none of above mentioned symptoms. These results suggest that families are, in general, intolerant of patients who were a nuisance to them in terms of physical damage or economic burden.