Relocation of long-stay general psychiatric in-patients

Abstract

The need for severely disabled long-stay general psychiatric in-patients to be resettled within their own districts is likely to arise increasingly as area mental hospitals close. The White Paper, Caring for People, acknowledges that some of these patients will continue to require hospital care. Transfer between hospitals might be considered a major life event for these patients, some of whom will have spent many years in the area mental hospital. Conflicting results have been found in studies of mortality rate following relocation (Morriss et al, 1988). Pryce's (1977) study with long-stay chronic schizophrenic patients and other more recent studies with new long-stay patients yielded data suggesting optimal environmental factors in keeping with Wing & Brown's (1970) observations.