Use of psychiatric inpatient capacities and diagnostic practice in Tashkent/Uzbekistan as compared to Berlin/Germany

Objectives The present study shows a comparison of diagnoses used for the treatment of urban psychiatric inpatients in Tashkent/Uzbekistan and Berlin/Germany. Differential diagnostic practices related to different traditions in psychopathology between the two settings are analysed to explain part of the difference in relative frequencies of the diagnoses. Methods We conducted a cross-sectional survey of diagnoses used for the treatment of 845 inpatients including 17 out of 18 wards of the Tashkent psychiatric hospital and of all 2,260 psychiatric and psychotherapeutic inpatients in Berlin in October 2008. Relative frequencies of diagnostic categories were calculated for each setting and compared between the two settings using the Chi-square test. A descriptive analysis of differential diagnostic practice is used to explain differences in relative frequencies. Results Patients diagnosed with schizophrenia (59.3 vs. 21.0%), with organic mental disorders (20.5 vs. 8.3%), with mental retardation (6.9 vs. 0.2%) and with neurasthenia (1.4 vs. 0.0%) had larger relative frequencies of the psychiatric inpatient population in Tashkent than in Berlin. Patients diagnosed with unipolar depression (24.1 vs. 0.9%), substance use disorder (17.4 vs. 6.4%), adjustment disorder (6.0 vs. 0.4%), schizoaffective disorder (4.9 vs. 0.0%), mania and bipolar disorder (5.3 vs. 0.4%), personality disorder (3.2 vs. 2.0%) and anxiety disorder (3.1 vs. 0.1%) had larger relative frequencies in Berlin than in Tashkent. The diagnostic concept of schizophrenia in Tashkent includes patients with affective psychoses, schizoaffective psychoses and delusional disorders. In Tashkent, mental disorders are more readily associated with organic brain disease such as head trauma or vascular disease than in Berlin. Conclusions In Tashkent, most of the psychiatric inpatient capacities are used for the treatment of schizophrenia and organic mental disorders, whereas in Berlin patients with affective disorders, schizophrenia and substance use disorders are most commonly treated as inpatients. The differences can in part be explained by differential diagnostic traditions between the Russian/post-Soviet nosology and the use of the ICD