Another question I'm frequently asked is: How long should I expect to be in the hospital?
As with many things in medical care, the answer boils down to "It depends."
Some of the uncertainty is understandable. Every patient is different and what a person might need changes. Some patients may be admitted for logistical reasons, if a CSU or PES is unable to coordinate a lower level of care within about 24 hours. Other patients may be admitted more because they absolutely need the 24 hour staff support and daily rounding available in hospital settings.
However, a new idea to many people is the idea that psychiatric hospitalizations can be quite short.
Due to the demand for psychiatric beds, the goal is to stabilize a patient such that they can continue their care elsewhere safely. Complete recovery is likely to occur over several weeks to months, and the patient's ongoing care might occur at several different types of treatment facilities.
I.e., if a person can be treated at any lower level of care, they are discharged to that level of care. This helps ensure that the limited psychiatric inpatient beds are made available as soon as possible to those who absolutely cannot tolerate a lower level of care.
That doesn't mean a person will necessarily be discharged home with recommendations to go to a standard outpatient psychiatric clinic. Discharge to standard outpatient psychiatry implies that a patient can tolerate seeing their physician every several weeks to months, and that they can tolerate that their treatment plans may take several visits to build.
Rather, if a patient still requires a higher level of care than standard outpatient care, they might be discharged to an intermediate level of care, like a residential program, a partial hospitalization program (PHP), or an intensive outpatient program (IOP). My goal is to speak about those programs in their own posts.
So, overall, it is becoming more rare for patients to leave an inpatient psychiatric hospitalization feeling completely recovered. Rather, the typical goal of discharge from the hospital is to help patients reach a place in their treatment plan where they will be safe and will continue to recover without the intensive staffing and daily rounding of the hospital.
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