Crisis Intervention and Prevention of Psychiatric Disability: A Follow-Up Study

Two groups of young adults were followed for two and a half years after their first psychiatric hospitalizations. The first group received traditional modes of treatment; the second group was hospitalized after the institution of a crisis intervention program. The authors compared the outcomes of the two groups to test whether crisis intervention could reduce long-term hospital dependency without producing alternate forms of psychological or social dependency. They found that crisis intervention did reduce hospitalization throughout the second group's follow-up period without an increase in other indices of disability.