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Bed Requirements for Acute Psychiatric Units—The Concept of a Norm

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Steven Hirsch
Steven Hirsch*
Affiliation:
Charing Cross Hospital Medical School
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The Department of Health's 1971 Circular (HM (71) 97) and the White Paper, Better Services for the Mentally Ill (1975), had recommended the guideline of 0.5 acute beds per 1,000 population as an average for District General Hospital units. Patients with stays of more than one year, the elderly severely mentally infirm (ESMI), children, adolescents, and certain specialized units were not included. Unfortunately, planners have tended to stick to this figure, despite the fact that the recommendation was only meant as a general guideline based on known bed usage up to 1974, and some more recent downward trends in newer smaller community-based units. The suggestion that bed requirements should be modified according to local circumstances had largely been ignored, and this is not surprising as there is little information which can help planners determine the factors or their weighting which any local authority should take into account to adapt the norm for ‘local circumstances'. This led to the setting up of a working party of the College's Social and Community Psychiatry Section to make recommendations on bed norms for acute psychiatric units.

Type
Research Article
Information
Bulletin of the Royal College of Psychiatrists , Volume 7 , Issue 7 , July 1983 , pp. 118 - 122
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1983

References

Department of Health and Social Security (1975) Better Services for the Mentally Ill. Cmnd 6233. London: HMSO.Google Scholar
Hirsch, S. R., Platt, S., Knights, A. & Weyman, A. (1979) Shortening hospital stay for psychiatric care: Effect on patients and their families. British Medical Journal, i, 442–46.Google Scholar
Robertson, G. (1981) The provision of in-patient facilities for the mentally ill: A paper to assist the NHS planners. Operational Research Section, DHSS.Google Scholar
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