Suicidal patients presenting to secondary and tertiary emergency departments and referral to a psychiatrist: a population-based descriptive study from Japan

Table 1 Characteristics of 19 emergency departments (secondary vs. tertiary)

	Secondary EDs	Tertiary EDs	P-value ^a
	(n = 14)	(n = 5)	P-value ^a
Mean number of beds in the facility (SD)	212 (176)	819 (302)	< .001
Mean number of emergency department visits (SD)	444 (371)	1589 (554)	< .001
Mean number of suicidal patients (SD)	2.6 (2.2)	9.0 (0.7)	< .001
Presence of psychiatrists in the facility
At least one psychiatrist in the facility, n (%)	3 (21)	4 (80)	0.04
No psychiatrist in the facility, n (%)	11 (79)	1 (20)
Mean number of psychiatrists in the facility (SD)	0.7 (1.7)	7.8 (9.5)	0.17

Emergency departments with at least one suicidal patient received in the month of September 2009 (of the total 74 facilities)
Abbreviation: ED emergency department, SD standard deviation
^aUsing Student’s t-test for numerical data and Fisher’s Exact Tests for categorical data, respectively

ISSN: 1471-244X