Historical archive of a former psychiatric hospital: a preliminary study in patients with dementia diagnosis

The historical archive of the former psychiatric hospital in Girifalco (CZ) consists of 15,794 clinical records of patients hospitalized between 1881 and 1978 [1,2]. For this study, the first 5,000 records will be scanned, digitized and transcribed through a speech recognition software. Historical clinical records could widen knowledge of dementia and its peculiar aspects such as BPSD by allowing comparison between the ancient behavioral and psychological disorders and the current ones. A quantitative study of dementia focusing on socio-demographic characteristics could be also performed. Despite difficulties in recovering and interpreting, historical clinical records of former psychiatric hospitals are precious sources of information to outline the historical evolution of dementia because the long stay in the asylum parallels a long-term clinical observation. Interestingly, dementia prevalence in this sample was double in men leading to the hypothesis of more aggressive BPSD in men. Results promise interesting outcomes as the study goes on.