Admissions to a close supervision unit. Do patients with repeated short admissions constitute the ‘revolving door’ patients of minimum secure provision?

Abstract

Close Supervision Units (CSUs) are a form of minimum secure provision first proposed by Gallwey (1990). Since then minimum secure provision has been recognized as a fundamental tier in forensic psychiatry between community care and medium and maximum secure provision. Patients admitted to minimum secure facilities may have long-term admissions; alternatively the same number of patients may use the same total admission time in the form of repeated short admissions which have been referred to as ‘revolving door admissions’. This article describes admissions to one CSU over a 12-month period for patients whose total length of stay was less than 6 months (55 admissions of 39 patients). Patients with one admission are compared with those having more than one admission to illustrate the differences between these two forms of service usage.

Key Words:

• intensive care
• diversion
• remand facilities