Faculty Bibliography

The authors studied the effect of long-term versus short-term hospitalization on a group of 74 patients with the diagnoses of affective disorder, neurosis and personality disorder, and hysterical personality one year after their admission to the hospital. Although they had found in an earlier study that short-term patients seemed to integrate more rapidly in the hospital, the results reported in this study showed no statistically reliable differences between the long-term and short-term groups. In contrast to the author's results for schizophrenic patients, their findings for nonschizophrenic patients do not support extended hospitalization.

The authors compared treatment results for 141 schizophrenic patients randomly assigned to short-term or long-term hospitalization. Test results indicated that the long-term group was functioning significantly better one year after admission according to global measures only. The authors caution that the differences between the two groups, although statistically reliable, were modest and may have been confounded by the amount of psychotherapy the patients received after hospitalization. Although there appears to be a general advantage to the long-term approach, further work will be needed to identify patient subgroups for whom this more expensive treatment is cost effective.

A controlled, prospective, two-year follow-up study examined the relative effectiveness of short-term vs long-term psychiatric hospitalization. Results of the inpatient phase for a sample of 74 nonschizophrenic patients are reported here. About four weeks after admission the patients hospitalized for a short stay were discharged, and at that time were functioning better than the patients in the long-stay group. When the patients hospitalized for a long stay were discharged, three to fur months after admission, they were then functioning as well as, but not noticeably better than, the patients in the short-stay group had been at their earlier time of discharge. Patients with affective disorders were more impaired at admission and improved more than patients with other diagnoses, regardless of length of stay.

The authors compared treatment results for 141 schizophrenic patients randomly assigned to short-term or long-term hospitalization. The patients received intensive treatment and were on partially fixed drug dosage schedules. Test results indicated that the short-term group was functioning better at four weeks. However, at discharge (21 to 28 days for short-term patients; 90 to 120 days for long-term) the long-term group showed significantly better functioning. There were no significant differences between the groups on symptomatology at discharge. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for decisions regarding length and type of hospitalization for schizophrenic patients.