The Family Enters the Hospital
GENE M. ABROMS M.D.1,
CARL H. FELLNER M.D.2, , and
CARL A. WHITAKER M.D.2
1 Associate Professor of Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin Medical School, Madison, Wis. 53706
2 Professor of Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin Medical School, Madison, Wis. 53706
The authors present a preliminary report of 18 months' full-time inpatient treatment of 100 patients and their families. Although a therapeutic impasse dictated most family admissions, the index patients improved as much as nonfamily-patient controls. The fact of family admission was a powerful therapeutic act in itself. Because the program was intense and short-term, it gave little opportunity for patients to regress. The authors recommend more use of this type of treatment and less of the customary "dilute" outpatient care.
