Rehabilitation of Chronic Schizophrenic Patients in a Long-Term Private Inpatient Setting

Abstract

Long-term inpatient care is becoming increasingly rare and is divided between public sector custodial treatment and private sector psychoanalytic treatment. Conventional wisdom dictates that effective rehabilitative strategies can be implemented in an outpatient setting. We argue that there is a small but significant group of chronic patients, primarily schizophrenics, whose behavior makes outpatient treatment unworkable. Such patients can be treated, not merely warehoused, when modem rehabilitative techniques are implemented in a long-term inpatient setting. A model program is described. Traditional stereotypes about the role of hospitalization in treating the recalcitrant patient are reconsidered.