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Admission of the homeless mentally ill in the UK

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Martin Commander  and
Sue Odell
Martin Commander*
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham and Northern Birmingham Mental Health Trust, Trust Headquarters, 71 Fentham Road, Erdington, Birmingham B23 6AL
Sue Odell
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham
*
∗Correspondence
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Abstract

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The reduction in psychiatric beds over the past few decades has coincided with burgeoning homelessness in the UK. What effect has this had on the provision of in-patient care to this neglected section of the population? Admissions of people of ‘no fixed abode’ in Birmingham were compared for the years 1961–1964 and 1995–1996. Both the number of admissions and duration of in-patient episodes had decreased and many patients continued to receive no aftercare. Solutions to the problem of homelessness among the severely mentally ill must address failings in hospital as well as community services.

Type
Original Papers
Information
Psychiatric Bulletin , Volume 22 , Issue 4 , April 1998 , pp. 207 - 210
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © 1998 The Royal College of Psychiatrists

Footnotes

†

See editorial pp. 195–197, this issue.

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