ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychiatry
Sec. Public Mental Health
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2025.1621800
This article is part of the Research TopicEmerging Perspectives in Psychiatry: Innovations and Insights from Early Career ResearchersView all articles
Bridging Neurology and Psychiatry: establishing Latin America's first dedicated Neuropsychiatry Ward at IPqHCFMUSP
Provisionally accepted
Daniele Costa Rachid Lacerda1,2*
Lucas D'Andrea Pereira Sousa1,2
Maruan Obeid1,2
Livia Souza Santos1,2Luis Antonio Bozutti1,2Renato Luiz Marchetti1,2- 1University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
- 2Institute of Psychiatry, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
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The convergence of neurology and psychiatry has become critical for managing disorders with overlapping neurological and psychiatric features. To fill a service gap in Latin America, Brazil's first Neuropsychiatry Ward (ENPQ) opened at the Institute of Psychiatry, Hospital das Clínicas, University of São Paulo in December 2024. This study describes the ward's rationale, structure, and early clinical outcomes. Methods: We performed a retrospective descriptive analysis of all 26 adult admissions to the ten-bed ENPQ from 1 December 2024 to 11 April 2025. We extracted age, sex, length of stay (LOS), primary diagnosis, and 30-day readmission from electronic records and computed descriptive statistics. Results: Patients had a mean age of 48.0 ± 15.4 years (69.2% female), with one-third aged ≥ 60 years. Epilepsy was the most common primary diagnosis ( 46.2%), followed by Bipolar affective disorder, Depressive disorder and Schizophrenia (7.7% each). The mean LOS was 26.1 days, and only two patients (7.6%) were readmitted within 30 days-a rate lower than those reported for both general psychiatric wards (≈16%) and tertiary neurology wards (≈12.5%). Conclusions: In this study, an integrated neuropsychiatry ward demonstrated feasibility in a public quaternary hospital and yielded a lower 30-day readmission rate than non-integrated settings, despite a complex referral population and a LOS comparable to standard care. These findings support further prospective, controlled studies to confirm the benefits of integrated neurologic and psychiatric management.
Keywords: Neuropsychiatry, Integrated health care, Research, Medical Education, Epilepsy
Received: 01 May 2025; Accepted: 07 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Lacerda, Sousa, Obeid, Santos, Bozutti and Marchetti. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Daniele Costa Rachid Lacerda, University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil
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