Are social deprivation and psychiatric service utilisation associated in neurotic disorders? A case register study in South Verona.

Measures of service utilisation from the South Verona psychiatric case register in North-East Italy for the years 1983, 1986 and 1989 were used to identify possible associations with sociodemographic variables from the 1981 census for neurotic disorders. There were no consistent patterns of associations between local social and demographic predictors and rates of psychiatric service utilisation. This contrasts markedly with the associations found previously in England (for all psychiatric admissions) and in Italy (for various measures of service utilisation concerning contacts both in and outside hospital for schizophrenic as well as for all psychiatric patients) where social deprivation factors proved to be strong predictors of service use.