Privatisation of psychiatric care is an increasing phenomenon in the USA. This is a relatively new trend and has followed on the heels of other trends like the deinstitutionalisation of the 1960s and 70s. Until recently the majority of in-patient population was in public hospitals, with some in psychiatric units of general hospitals. In the 1980s, the private hospital corporations seem to have discovered that there is money to be made in the business of psychiatric care and started building and marketing psychiatric hospitals on a wide scale.