Psychiatric hospital

A psychiatric hospital (also called a mental hospital, mental ward, asylum, and occasionally insane asylum , funny farm) is a hospital specialising in the treatment of persons with mental illness. Psychiatric wards differ only in that they are a unit of a larger hospital.

Types of psychiatric hospitals

There are a number of different types of modern psychiatric hospitals or wards.

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Crisis stabilisation

One is the crisis stabilisation unit, which is in effect an emergency room for mental disorders. Because involuntary commitment laws in many jurisdictions require a judge to issue a commitment order within a short time (often 72 hours) of the patient's entry to the unit and because moving a severely ill mental patient can be extremely dangerous, especially as the patient may try to harm himself/herself or others, many of these stabilisation units have conference rooms which are used as courtrooms for emergency commitment procedures.

Related Topics:
Emergency room - Involuntary commitment

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Open units

Open units are psychiatric units that are less secure than crisis stabilisation units. They are not used for acutely suicidal persons; the focus on these units is to make life as normal as possible for patients while continuing to treat them to the point where they can be discharged. However, patients are usually still not allowed to hold their own medications in their rooms, because of the risk of an impulsive overdose. While some open units are still physically unlocked, other open units still use locked entrances and exits. This is to keep patients from leaving impulsively or without being discharged from the unit.

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Medium-term

Juvenile wards

Juvenile wards are sections of psychiatric hospitals or psychiatric wards set aside for children and/or adolescents with mental illness.

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These usually consists of anyone aged 18 and younger.

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Geriatric wards

Hospitals for prisoners with mental illness

One other type of psychiatric hospital is designed for long-term care: a combination hospital and prison for the "criminally insane": typically, people with a psychotic illness or personality disorder who have committed serious crimes. In the United States, these are generally operated by the state government and exist in a few centralised locations. In the UK, the hospitals are run by the government in conjunction with the NHS, the best-known British institution of this type is Broadmoor in Berkshire. In most cases, persons within these hospitals have been charged with serious crimes and have been found not guilty by reason of insanity. As a result, in addition to the precautions to prevent suicide there are also precautions against escape (such as those found in a prison). The treatment of persons within such institutions has been a subject of long-standing debate, because a patient will often spend more time in the hospital than they would have spent in prison. However, the severely mentally ill often get much worse in standard prisons, and are usually targets of an even greater than normal amount of abuse from the rest of the prison population. Also, it is felt that if a severe mental illness causes someone to commit a crime, locking them up without treating the illness is both a violation of their civil rights and serves simply to put them back on the street, where the same untreated illness will often drive them to commit another crime, beginning the cycle anew.

Related Topics:
Psychotic illness - Personality disorder - Broadmoor - Prison

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Halfway houses

One final type of mental institution which is not a hospital is a community-based halfway house which provides assisted living for mental patients for an extended period of time. These institutions are considered to be one of the most important parts of a mental health system by many psychiatrists, although many localities fail to provide sufficient funding for them.

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Used as a form of prison

In some countries the mental institution may be used for the incarceration of political prisoners, as a form of oppression.

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See Psikhushka.

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