Child-Adolescent Unit in a Psychiatric Hospital

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Abstract
WHILE the number of adults confined to mental hospitals has dropped dramatically in the past decade, the number of child-adolescent patients has risen alarmingly. There are over 25,000 patients now in state, county, and private psychiatric hospitals and this number is expected to double by 1973; admission rates of children and adolescents to state hospitals have already risen 150% in the past decade.1,2Community mental health centers play an important role in crisis intervention and short-term treatment but there exists a number—a large number—of children who require inpatient treatment over a longer period of time, outside their home, in a structured setting with an intramural school program and psychiatrically supervised milieu. The mental hospital, like it or not, has become and will continue to be a vital and vast treatment resource for mentally ill children and adolescents, and in fact, a

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