THE CHAIN OF CHRONICITY
Abstract
The goal of the study was to learn something of the process by which a newly-admitted patient becomes chronic. Interviews were held with 46 patients who had been transferred from the admission ward to a long-stay ward. Each patient was asked whether he knew the reasons for transfer, the person who told him, and what the transfer meant to him. The ward files of these patients were also examined to learn the official reason for the patient's transfer. Finally a comparison was made of the social-psychological characteristics of 50 patients who had been discharged from the admission ward and 50 patients who had been transferred to long-stay wards. It was found that most of the patients who were transferred rather than discharged were simple, catatonic, or undifferentiated schizophrenics. Patients who were transferred also tended to be unmarried and on the average spent less time on the admission ward than patients who were eventually discharged. The implications of these findings for the prevention of chronicity among mental patients were discussed.
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