The Family Enters the Hospital

The authors present a preliminary report of 18 months' full-time inpatient treatment of 100 patients and their families. Although a therapeutic impasse dictated most family admissions, the index patients improved as much as nonfamily-patient controls. The fact of family admission was a powerful therapeutic act in itself. Because the program was intense and short-term, it gave little opportunity for patients to regress. The authors recommend more use of this type of treatment and less of the customary "dilute" outpatient care.