Frequency of psychiatric readmission causes and associated risk factors: A retrospective cross-sectional study in Qazvin, Iran

Introduction: Readmission after discharge is recognized as one of the major indicators of the quality of care provided in hospitals. Recurrent hospitalization is common among patients in psychiatric wards and is caused by a myriad of factors. The present study aimed to identify the causes of readmission and associated risk factors in patients with a history of recurrent hospitalization in 22 Bahman Psychiatric Hospital in Qazvin, Iran. Methods: This retrospective cross-sectional study was performed by the census method in Psychiatric Hospital in Qazvin, Iran, on all the patients who were admitted at least three times from 2015 to 2019. The following data were extracted from patient profiles using certain checklists: age, gender, educational level, residential location, occupation, marital status, clinical diagnosis, number of hospitalizations, duration of disease, intervals between admissions, substance abuse, regular outpatient visits, and regular use of medications. Data were analyzed in SPSS software (version 22). A P < 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: The current study was conducted on 182 patients with a history of readmission who were selected by the census method. The majority of subjects (n = 131) were male, and their mean age score was reported as 39.96 ± 10.41 years. Furthermore, the most frequent clinical diagnosis based on which the patients were admitted included bipolar I disorder (manic phase) (29.7%) and schizophrenia (22.2%), respectively. The number of hospitalizations was significantly correlated with education level (0.013), marital status (0.012), residential location (0.049), intervals between admissions (0.009), follow-up pattern (<0.001), and treatment pattern (<0.001). Conclusion: As evidenced by the results of the present study, clinical diagnosis, education level, marital status, residential location, intervals between admissions, treatment patterns, and follow-up patterns of patients were effective in the frequency of recurrent hospitalization in patients with mental disorders.