The Role of the Hospital in Psychiatric Research

Abstract

Some time ago one could have said both truly and succinctly that hospitals are the places where patients are, and from this basic premise it would have been fairly easy to work out a presentable picture of the role of hospitals in research. Now, however, epidemiologists tell us that many mentally sick people are not admitted to hospital, and clinicians stress that if admission occurs it is likely to represent a recurrent episode in a long programme of management in which important therapeutic influences are brought to bear on the patient at work or in other places remote from hospital. It therefore seems reasonable to conclude that certain types or phases of research which might once have been carried out in hospital must now be done elsewhere.