CMHC Inpatient Unit: Private Hospital for the Poor?

An inpatient unit of a community mental health center located in a general hospital had ample beds and accepted all referrals from clinicians working in affiliated outpatient units. A study of the patients admitted to the CMHC unit showed that they more closely resembled the population of private psychiatric facilities in age, sex, and diagnosis, but in social class they were more like patients in public facilities. The author suggests that CMHC inpatient units may be filling a useful role by making brief hospitalization available to neurotic patients of the lower socioeconomic classes who previously were denied hospital care.