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A Study of Long-Term Patients Attending a General Hospital Psychiatric Department

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

I. Pilowsky
Affiliation:
University of Sheffield, Whiteley Wood Clinic, Sheffield 10
J. D. Stirland
Affiliation:
Chesterfield Group of Hospitals

Extract

During the past ten years much attention has been paid to the question of chronicity in mental hospital patients. At the same time there has been a trend towards establishing units (often attached to general hospitals) for short-stay in-patient and possibly day-patient care. In these units, where the emphasis is on outpatient treatment, it is soon apparent to the psychiatrists staffing them that they, too, have to cope with a population of chronic patients. They tend, however, to be outpatients rather than in-patients, and are probably better described as “long-term”. Heasman (1962) gave a graphic description of this problem in the non-psychiatric outpatient department and compared it to that of the “institutional neurosis” as described by Barton (1959). The purpose of this paper is to describe the situation in a Teaching Hospital Department of Psychiatry attached to a general hospital.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1966 

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References

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