Hospitalization

As a rule two physicians must testify before a judge, though in some states admission is allowed on the word of a single doctor in emergency situations. The likelihood of anyone's being "railroaded" into a mental hospital is so remote as to be virtually nonexistent. Stories of normal individuals having been forced into mental hospitals and then kept there against their wills are almost totally fictitious. This sort of thing just does not happen.

If a friend or relative is admitted to a private psychiatric hospital, one can be assured that he will in all probability obtain excellent care. If he is admitted to a state hospital the care may be less exhaustive, and there may well be fewer niceties. On the whole, nonetheless, the family of a mentally ill person sent to a state hospital can rest easy in the knowledge that adequate and prompt care will be given. Some of the country's state hospitals are centers of research and education in mental illness; in them the patient will receive care unrivaled anywhere in the world.

The admission of a mentally ill individual to any hospital involves many problems and difficulties which may be particularly harrowing to relatives. A whole book could be written on the arrangements for getting a patient admitted, for taking him to the hospital, how to leave him there, how relatives should behave during visiting periods, on the hospital atmosphere and its activities, on when to write the patient and what to write him.

When a mentally ill patient is discharged from the hospital as being sufficiently improved to live in the outside world, both he and his family and friends face problems in adjustment. So far as the patient is concerned, this is a time for neither pampering nor pushing. The family at this time particularly needs the advice of whatever physician is superintending this part of the patient's recovery. In some states such supervision is carried out by the hospital itself, in others by local mental health clinics, in still others by private physicians.

The sooner the patient can get back to the care of his own family physician, the better. It may be necessary for the patient to continue on medication for some time after discharge from the hospital. This must be given under a physician's direction, and under no circumstances should any other medications be given by relatives who sense the patient's discomfort and think they can thereby relieve it. After-care will usually be necessary for a time; it will be administered by a physician or one of his professional associates and final decisions must be left in his hands.

Unfortunately, local facilities for the hospital care of mentally ill persons are still far from satisfactory. Any citizen interested in mental health can do no greater service to his community and his friends than to work toward their development. He should support the establishment of mental health clinics, child guidance centers, and particularly, psychiatric facilities in the local general hospital.

Mental illness of all sorts, including alcoholism, is just as much the business of every community hospital as physical illness. The ultimate aim in any community should be the possession of such facilities as will take care of that community's mentally sick. Eventually the state hospital should be only for the incurable, who require long-term custodial care. The individual citizen can assist in this aim by joining the efforts of his local mental health association and by contributing to and supporting in every way his already existent mental health facilities. He can also lend his voice to the demand that health insurance cover mental illness as it covers physical illness, so that mentally ill persons can be cared for in local private and community hospitals.

As with all illness, some cases of mental illness are incurable. This fact is as difficult to face as incurable cancer or a fatal heart attack. The old, whose brains are suffering a degeneration that cannot be reversed, are not going to recover. But proper hospital care can make their final days more comfortable.

There is now greater hope for the young people who have schizophrenia and were formerly thought incurable. More of them are being discharged from the hospital than ever, thanks to new psychotherapeutic understanding and the use of new drugs. Medicine has reached the point where one never gives up hope for the apparently most hopeless psychotic patient.