title: The "chronic" mental hospital patient.
abstract: The rapid decrease in the resident population of state hospitals over the last decade has engendered a debate over the future role of the state hospital in the overall mental health services system. The authors report on a 1979 study of more than 2,000 state hospital patients designed to evaluate the characteristics of the current hospital population. Their findings document the existence of a new long-stay population that in many ways is similar to the old long-stay population that existed before deinstitutionalization. Continued hospitalization of the new population of long-stay patients, who now are younger than the old long-stay patient group, could cost more than $500 million dollars a year. The authors discuss the difficulty in predicting future trends from the existing data and outline four areas for future research.
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D002908:Chronic Disease; D003866:Depressive Disorder / Q000628:therapy; D005260:Female; D006778:Hospitals, Psychiatric / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006783:Hospitals, State / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006801:Humans; D008607:Intellectual Disability / Q000628:therapy; D007902:Length of Stay; D008297:Male; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000628:therapy*; D008875:Middle Aged; D019965:Neurocognitive Disorders / Q000628:therapy; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000628:therapy; D014481:United States