Brief Hospital Treatment of Schizophrenia-Early Results of a Multiple - Hospital Study

IN SUMMARY, our early findings seem to justify the following tentative conclusions: * Intensive time-limited treatment is feasible. Compared with routine hospital treatment, it results in a modest reduction in florid symptoms in a larger number of patients. * Despite their shorter stay, patients in the brief-treatment group showed no greater rate of readmission, nor was their mean time outside significantly different from that of controls who had received normal hospital care. * Regardless of the actual number of days of hospitalization, an intensive aftercare program seems to play an important role in reducing or preventing readmissions. * In trying to determine just how brief a brief inpatient treatment program should be, we must consider a number of reality factors, such as individual differences between patients, patient-staff ratios, difficulties in establishing maximally effective drug dosages, and the availability of community aftercare facilities.