Prague, Jan 18 (CTK) – The number of psychiatric patients is on the rise in the Czech Republic with a population of 10.5 million where at present more than 650,000 people see a psychiatrist, daily Pravo wrote on Wednesday.
Consequently, there are 617 psychiatric patients per 10,000 inhabitants of the country.
The number of people suffering from neurotic disorders has doubled in the past 30 years, Pravo writes, citing the latest analysis on Czechs’ mental health published by the Czech Institute of Health Information and Statistics (UZIS) published in January.
“In 2015, 650,566 patients were treated in psychiatric surgeries, which means an almost 8-percent rise or 47,361 persons, compared with 2013,” the UZIS writes.
Unlike neurosis, the number of patients with schizophrenia has only slightly increased from under 40,000 30 years ago to some 50,000 in 2015.
Psychiatrists do not know the exact reasons for the steep rise in neurotic disorder incidence.
Doctor Pavel Rican, from the Centre for Mental Health Care Development, says people may less fear to see a psychiatrist than in the past or that more frequent neurotic disorders may be connected with the current hectic lifestyle. However, he admits that those are just hypotheses since no exact data are available.
In 1988, 120,000 patients were treated at Czech psychiatric wards with neurotic disorders, while last year, it was 240,000.
The rise in the number of neurotic patients temporarily stopped in 2005-2008 only, but then it resumed again, Pravo writes, adding that the data for last year have not been released yet.
The number of people treated with sexual deviations decreased by 43 percent from 2013 to 2015 and the incidence of personality and mood disorders dropped by 6 percent in the same period.
On the contrary, the incidence of disorders caused by the use of addictive substances increased by 2 percent (alcohol) and 13 percent (other substances such as drugs).
The UZIS has also monitored a rising incidence of developmental disorders in childhood and adolescence (4 percent), neurotic disorders and pathological gambling (2 percent each), Pravo writes.
It says women are treated with mental disorders more often than men since they make up 60 percent of all psychiatric patients.
However, some psychiatrists are of the view that many patients take antidepressants uselessly since they try to solve any quite long bad mood by pills though they do not actually suffer from depression, Pravo writes.
Doctor Tomas Kampe points out that some people cannot cope with the current society’s demands for being always “happy and cool.”
“Then people refuse to stand even a slight discontent or psychological discomfort,” Kampe said on the Zena.cz portal.
According to the UZIS statistics, the most frequent psychiatric diagnosis is neurotic disorder (40 percent), followed by mood disorders (18 percent) and then disorders caused by addictive substances and schizophrenia (some 8 percent each).
