One major goal of this blog is to help demystify the types of psychiatric care that are available. Psychiatry is a medical specialty, but even within the specialty there are many different types of care available.
So far this blog has completed brief overviews of psychiatric intake appointments, psychotherapy intake appointments, and emergency psychiatric care. We've also briefly touched on one common role of psychiatrists in hospital systems, as psychiatric consultants.
As always, a few caveats before starting the new series:
Psychiatric hospitals vary based on region and resources available. Not every psychiatric hospital will have the same services or processes.
My posts on psychiatric hospitalization will focus on California systems, and even more so on urban regions that are more likely to have several types of psychiatric hospitals available. This is just a reflection of where I practice currently, and therefore the systems I have the most familiarity with.
While these posts may not apply specifically to where you live, my hope is that a general overview will be helpful.
If you are interested in following along for this series, I recommend also reading over the emergency psychiatry blog posts. So many patients start the hospitalization process by presenting to an emergency room. Those posts might help new readers get an idea of what might happen before a patient arrives at a psychiatric hospital.
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