How Norwegian casualty clinics handle contacts related to mental illness: A prospective observational study

Table 6 Descriptive background information and key results by casualty clinic (A-D)

	A		B		C		D
Descriptive information
Number of municipalities participating in the casualty clinic	1		10		1		1
Number of inhabitants 01.01.10	18680		88997		8360		67305
Description of community	Mostly rural		Urban and rural		Rural		Urban
									Total
Key results	n	%	n	%	n	%	n	%	n	%	p-value
Nurse registered initial contacts
Total number of contacts	5493		10818		2456		9760		28527
Contacts related to substance misuse or mental illness	139	2.5	198	1.8	32	1.3	346	3.5	715	2.5	<0.001
Judged acute or urgent	43	32.3	101	53.7	12	38.7	124	38.0	280	41.3	<0.001
Handled by nurse	38	28.6	42	22.5	5	16.1	137	41.8	222	32.7	<0.001
Home-visits/emergency call-outs	7	5.3	8	4.3	5	16.1	8	2.4	28	4.1	<0.01
GP registered contacts
Total number of contacts	1486		3123		806		4072		9487
Contacts related to substance misuse	40	2.7	123	3.9	23	2.9	119	2.9	305	3.2	0.05
Contacts related to mental illness	73	4.9	138	4.4	15	1.9	149	3.7	375	4.0	0.001
Contacts related to substance use and mental illness combined	49	3.3	67	2.1	12	1.5	79	1.9	207	2.2	<0.01
Extracts from medical records
Total number of extracts	158		314		44		337		853
Total referrals to in-patient treatment	46	29.1	108	34.4	14	31.8	122	36.2	290	34.0	0.47
Admissions to psychiatric ward	16	10.1	52	16.6	3	6.8	60	17.8	131	15.4	0.05
Involuntary admissions	2	1.3	19	6.1	2	4.5	30	8.9	53	6.2	0.01

Percent denotes percentage of relevant contacts. Group differences were tested with Pearson’s chi-squared test.