scholarly journals Community in-patient units and halfway hospitals

2000 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 120-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Boardman ◽  
Richard Hodgson

There is a current gap in the nomenclature of psychiatric in-patient services. There are few descriptions of types of in-patient care and over recent years the literature has abounded with debates concerning alternatives. However, it may be argued that these debates have been based on the creation of the ‘straw man’ of the psychiatric admission, which is only fit for knocking down. Although a post-war consensus has emerged concerning the need to abandon the Victorian asylums, this has often been misrepresented as the need to avoid in-patient admission. The poorly articulated and emotional concept of community care and its lack of clear and consistent definition in public policy and key legislation have contributed to this (Bulmer, 1987). Recent changes in our view of community care have led to a refining of the concept and a shift from its comforting appellations (Titmus, 1968) to a pragmatic approach that matches it to empirical experiences and new resources. This approach sees psychiatric services for adults as being based locally and provided by a spectrum of services – in-patient, residential and ambulatory (Department of Health, 1996) – based on best available evidence. This article has been written with these issues in mind. We will address the current problems of in-patient care and the current literature on alternatives and supplements to traditional in-patient units.

1972 ◽  
Vol 120 (557) ◽  
pp. 433-436 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. G. Morgan ◽  
R. M. Compton

Department of Health and Social Security statistics show a steady rise in the use of outpatient services from the inception of the National Health Service; since the Mental Health Act of 1959, the numbers of new outpatient and clinic attendances have increased by one-third and one-fifth respectively (D.H.S.S., 1971). However, as our knowledge of the actual functions of out-patient services and their relationship to in-patient care is at best only rudimentary, the recent article by Mezey and Evans (Journal, June 1971, 118, p. 609) is a much needed contribution towards evaluating these different facilities of the psychiatric services.


1989 ◽  
Vol 13 (8) ◽  
pp. 407-408 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edward Peck

Working for Patients and the subsequent Working Papers mention psychiatric services explicitly only twice. The proposals have been formulated for patients requiring tests and treatment for elective surgical conditions. They are the conditions which are believed to be predictable and therefore the most receptive to contractual specification and pricing. The health care contract is to be central to the new NHS. It is the device by which the Department of Health hopes to produce a fundamental change in attitude by both doctors and managers. Kenneth Clarke seems much more concerned with this attitudinal shift than with the detail of what the NHS might resemble a decade from now. This omission of overt consideration of psychiatric services does not allow us to ignore the White Paper. I intend to focus on the potential implications of the proposed themes for psychiatric services, particularly in the context of what they might indicate about the Government response to Community Care: Agenda for Action.


1997 ◽  
Vol 6 (S1) ◽  
pp. 137-144
Author(s):  
Kathryn Evans ◽  
Peter Tyrer ◽  
Naresh Gandhi ◽  
Alwyn Lamont ◽  
Phil Harrison-Read

Most of the studies that are frequently cited as examples of effective comprehensive community care, (i.e. they reduce the demand for hospital beds without any loss in treatment efficacy (Stein & Test, 1980; Hoult & Reynolds, 1984; Muijen et al., 1992) were carried out before the introduction of the Care Programme Approach (CPA) in 1991 (Department of Health, 1990) which at present only applies to England. As the CPA derives from these earlier studies the discrepancies between hospital and community based aftercare might be expected to become less, as now all services in England are expected to include a significant community element. However, there can still be important differences between those services focusing on community care as the main priority and those in which the hospital system is paramount.The psychiatric services in the area covered by North West London Mental Health Trust (NWL Trust) represented a natural test of these two approaches as they had parallel hospital and community based teams covering the same catchment areas respectively, North Paddington, in Westminster and Brent, in outer London.At this point it is useful to provide more detailed description of the two geographical areas at the time of the study and the community and hospital based teams that were involved.


Author(s):  
Ben Tonra

This chapter explores the roots of Irish foreign, security, and defence policy, placing them in the context of a deeply pragmatic approach to public policy. Those roots are defined in terms of nationalism, solidarity, and global justice, which are themselves deep markers within Irish political culture. Ireland’s pragmatic approach is then grounded in a meticulously crafted rhetoric surrounding key foreign policy priorities but an associated reluctance to devote substantial resources towards these foreign policy and defence goals. Together, this gives rise to an assessment that the interests of smaller and less powerful states such as Ireland are best defended within legitimate, strong, and effective multilateral institutions such as the UN—even as the state continues to face adaptation challenges arising from a deepening foreign, security, and defence policy engagement within the EU.


1984 ◽  
Vol 145 (2) ◽  
pp. 178-186 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Sturt

SummaryA census was taken of all patients in psychiatric hostels and homes, psychiatric day care, and short-term in-patient care who also had at least one year's history of contact with services. During the following two years, 61% of the patients stayed continuously in day or residential care, while 17% were discharged from care within the first year and made no further use of day or residential services. Two main patterns of contact were evident–repeated short-term in-patient care or longer-term care in services outside hospital. Their most important determinant was whether a viable marriage still existed for the patient.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leon Y. Xiao

Loot boxes represent a popular and prevalent contemporary monetisation innovation in video games that offers the purchasing player-consumer, who always pays a set amount of money for each attempt, the opportunity to obtain randomised virtual rewards of uncertain in-game and real-world value. Loot boxes have been and continue to be scrutinised by regulators and policymakers because their randomised nature is akin to gambling. The regulation of loot boxes is a current and challenging international public policy and consumer protection issue. This paper reviews the psychology literature on the potential harms of loot boxes and applies the behavioural economics literature in order to identify the potentially abusive nature and harmful effects of loot boxes, which justify their regulation. This paper calls on the industry to publish loot box spending data and cooperate with independent empirical research to avoid overregulation. By examining existing regulation, this paper identifies the flaws of the ‘regulate loot boxes as gambling’ approach and critiques the alternative consumer protection approach of adopting ethical game design, such as disclosing the probabilities of obtaining randomised rewards and setting maximum spending limits. This paper recommends a combined legal and self-regulatory approach: the law should set out minimal acceptable standards of consumer protection and industry self-regulation should thrive to achieve an even higher standard.


1995 ◽  
Vol 19 (2) ◽  
pp. 106-107
Author(s):  
Rosemary Lethem

The purpose of aftercare is to enable patients to return to their home or accommodation other than a hospital or nursing home, and to minimse the need for future in-patient care. Under section 117 of the Mental Health Act 1983, local health and social services authorities have a legal duty to provide aftercare for certain categories of patients when they leave hospital (Department of Health and Welsh Office, 1993).


1992 ◽  
Vol 160 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-153 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. G. Morgan

In 1989 a crisis occurred in a West Country seaside town. Its psychiatric services had been regarded as a vanguard of community care, having been fully established some three years previously when the in-patient facilities which had been based in a mental hospital some 15 miles away were closed. The framework of the new-style service consisted of five mental health centres scattered throughout the residential area and a 60-bed in-patient unit, based in the grounds of the local district general hospital.


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