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Psychiatric
patients receive less Get Well Soon cards
December
12, 2005
Psychiatric
inpatients receive around two times fewer "Get Well Soon"
cards than patients on other wards.
This
is largely because psychiatric inpatients have less friends, are
ashamed of their diagnosis, and people believe it is unlikely they
will recover, according to a paper in this month’s Psychiatric
Bulletin journal.
The
study compared general inpatients at Sheffield's Royal Hallamshire
Hospital and Northern General Hospital with psychiatric inpatients
at Sheffield Care Trust.
The
psychiatric patients had received 2-3 greeting cards on average,
while other patients had received 4-6 cards, the study found.
The paper's authors - Sudheer Lankappa, a lecturer in psychiatry
at the University of Sheffield, and Sean Spence, professor of general
adult psychiatry also of the University of Sheffield, wrote: “Even
such a simple social transaction as the giving and receiving of
a greetings card exposes the discontinuity between the world of
the general hospital patient and that of the psychiatric in-patient.
"It suggests that despite a contemporary emphasis upon ‘care
in the community’, integration, and the reduction of stigma…following
their admission to hospital, psychiatric in-patients are indeed
treated differently to others; and this treatment implicates those
who are ‘closest’ to them.”
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