Brief Hospitalization on a Crisis Service: A Study of Patient and Treatment Variables

The authors conducted a study of a brief hospitalization unit of a general hospital crisis intervention service to obtain empirical data on certain aspects of the patients and of the treatment services. They found that patients admitted to the unit had major psychiatric problems and that the same number with similar psychopathology were admitted during the day as during the night. Twice as many patients were discharged with plans for outpatient treatment than for inpatient treatment; these two groups differed on several dimensions of psychopathology. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for staff and treatment programs on such a unit.