A PSYCHIATRIC SERVICE IN A GENERAL HOSPITAL A Setting for Social Learning

The psychiatric service we have described meets equally well the needs of patients diagnosed as having a psychiatric illness, and the needs of other types of patients more generally found in the medical and surgical wards of a general hospital. Our service admits both types of patients and regards both in terms of life problems which have generated the apparent disabilities. Whether the patient is a "psychiatric" or a "medical" patient, we give major attention to the study and treatment of the psychosocial factors in his illness.

Because the main function of the service is to enable the patient to carry over newly acquired insight and newly learned behavior to other settings more or less similar to the hospital ward, our diagnostic and treatment procedures depart considerably from those of conventional psychiatric services. These departures, in turn, determine noticeably different roles for patients, for all participating professional and nonprofessional personnel, and for the administrators of the service and of the hospital.