A Controlled Evaluation of Day Hospital Effectiveness

THE CONCEPT of sociopsychiatric treatment, the development of effective chemotherapy, and enormous public investment in community mental health facilities have radically affected the structure of psychiatric treatment within the United States. Mental health facilities geared to handle the diversity of patients for whom the traditional and often isolated mental hospital was once the only treatment resource have been and are being constructed. The comprehensive community mental health center, as outlined by the National Institute of Mental Health,¹ consists of five essential and interrelated services: inpatient, outpatient, partial hospitalization, emergency, and consultation-education. The specificity of these services, however, has not been clearly delineated.² For whom is partial hospitalization appropriate? Upon what basis should treatment assignments to the outpatient service be made? The present study is an attempt to compare two community based services and to determine whether each is capable