The Medical journal of Australia
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Comparative Study
Compulsory admission of the mentally ill: adequacy of documentation.
The issues that are involved in the compulsory detention and treatment of persons with mental illness are complex. There has been an improvement in the adequacy of documentation of such persons in the first five years of operation of the new South Australian Mental Health Act, 1976-1977. However, an appreciable proportion of documents still do not appear to comply adequately with the statutory requirements. This may be related not only to shortcomings in the medical documentation, but also to ambiguities and possible overlapping in the criteria for compulsory detention and treatment.
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An investigation of 527 consecutive patients showed that 24 (4.5%) had hypomagnesaemia (plasma magnesium level, less than 0.70 mmol/L) and 26 (4.9%) had hypermagnesaemia (plasma magnesium level, greater than 1.00 mmol/L). The magnesium levels returned to normal values without specific treatment in 15 of the hypomagnesaemic patients. ⋯ Eighteen of the hypermagnesaemic patients received no specific treatment, in five the plasma magnesium values returned to normal levels within three days, while the high levels were maintained in the remaining 13 patients, but none was in excess of 1.15 mmol/L. These results suggest that many cases of hypomagnesaemia are transient and do not require treatment; severe hypomagnesaemia occurs only in patients with disorders that are known to cause magnesium deficiency; hypermagnesaemia is common in renal insufficiency; most cases of mild hypermagnesaemia (plasma magnesium level, less than 1.20 mmol/L) do not require specific treatment; and that screening all patients for hyper- or hypomagnesaemia is clinically unproductive and only those patients with disorders that are known to affect magnesium metabolism need to be investigated.
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Review Comparative Study
Cannabis: toxicological properties and epidemiological aspects.