Unwelcome Patients: Where Can They Find Asylum?

Psychiatric staff at Bellevue Hospital have a list of disruptive patients who apply frequently for readmission but refuse to participate in the hospital's therapeutic program. The staff feel that the patients have received "maximum hospital benefit" and should not continue to be readmitted. The authors studied the charts of 23 patients on the list and found that most were young men with few vocational or social skills. They responded to stress with rage, often augmented by alcoholism or drug abuse. As one way of helping these unwanted patients, the authors suggest the development of therapeutic research units in which patients would be sheltered, protected from their impulses, and taught how to become self-sufficient.