Prediction of Admission to a Psychiatric Hospital

MANY innovations in mental hospitals over the last ten years have been accompanied by a reevaluation of almost all aspects of traditional hospital practice. Some studies have indicated that people seek admission to mental hospitals not primarily because of their mental disorder, but on the basis of factors in their social living situations, etc.2,3,5,6On this basis the traditional assumption that the admitting doctor's judgments of the state of the patient's illness determines admission or nonadmission to a mental hospital has been questioned.7In fact, the standards for admission to any mental hospital are seldom explicit and even when stated, they sometimes appear to bear little relationship to the actual admission procedures. This confusion about admission policies appears to have contributed to the lack of differentiation of the levels at which social and intrapsychic variables operate. This study compares the effectiveness of sev