How is a mental health hospitalization similar to and different from a hospitalization for a physical health concern?
Medical and psychiatric hospitalizations are similar in that the purpose of both is to provide more intensive treatment and monitoring than can be provided at home. In both cases, the hospital environment is set up with safety and treatment as its first priority, and a patient does not have easy access to all of the things that he or she is used to at home. Further, in a psychiatric hospital, intensive treatment means that the patient is observed closely; the actual level of supervision varies according to the staff’s assessment of the patient’s level of risk for destructive behavior. The most closely observed status is one-to-one, where a staff person observes the patient continuously. The least observed status is when the patient is able to move freely around the hospital unit.
