The frequent use of psychiatric emergency poses problems due to the loss of their adaptative capacity and diagnosis, orientation and therapeutic difficulties for clinicians.

To estimate the prevalence of frequent visitors to psychiatric emergency and to describe their sociodemographic and clinical characteristics.

It is a cross-sectional study of twelve months including patients who consulted at least twice to medical emergency department in the university hospital of Mahdia. Data were collected using a predefined questionnaire.

The prevalence of recurrence was 30,2%. The main characteristics were: a mean age of 35,5 years, a male gender (64,5%), being unemployment (72,3%), a single status (71%), a request from the family (55,5%) and the presence of psychiatric personal history (91,6%). Previous hospitalizations were noticed in 69% of cases. 44,5% of the patients had problems with the primary support group and the social environment. In 78,6% of cases, patients had visited emergency twice to four times. The most encountered reason for consultation was heteroagressivity (27%) and the most frequent syndromic diagnosis was psychomotor excitation (25.2%). Hospitalization concerned 47.1% of patients. Schizophrenia and bipolar disorder were the most diagnosed disorders in 54,2% and 25% of cases.

Absence of intermediate structures and lack of coordination between the various stakeholders involved in the management of patients are the two main encountered problems.