WordNet
n. a hospital for mentally incompetent or unbalanced person [syn: mental hospital, mental institution, institution, mental home, insane asylum, asylum]
Wikipedia
Psychiatric hospitals, also known as mental hospitals, and as psychiatric wards ("psych" wards) when they are a subunit of a regular hospital, are hospitals or wards specializing in the treatment of serious psychiatric diseases, such as clinical depression, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder. Psychiatric hospitals vary widely in their size and grading. Some hospitals may specialize only in short-term or outpatient therapy for low-risk patients. Others may specialize in the temporary or permanent care of residents who, as a result of a psychological disorder, require routine assistance, treatment, or a specialized and controlled environment. Patients are often admitted on a voluntary basis, but people whom psychiatrists believe may pose a significant danger to themselves or others may be subject to involuntary commitment.
Modern psychiatric hospitals evolved from, and eventually replaced the older lunatic asylums. The treatment of inmates in early lunatic asylums was sometimes brutal and focused on containment and restraint. With successive waves of reform, and the introduction of effective evidence-based treatments, modern psychiatric hospitals provide a primary emphasis on treatment, and attempt where possible to help patients control their own lives in the outside world, with the use of a combination of psychiatric drugs and psychotherapy.
A crisis stabilization unit is in effect an emergency room for psychiatry, frequently dealing with suicidal, violent, or otherwise critical individuals. Open units are psychiatric units that are not as secure as crisis stabilization units. Another type of psychiatric hospital is medium term, which provides care lasting several weeks. In the United Kingdom, both crisis admissions and medium term care is usually provided on acute admissions wards. Juvenile or adolescent wards are sections of psychiatric hospitals or psychiatric wards set aside for children and/or adolescents with mental illness. Long-term care facilities have the goal of treatment and rehabilitation back into society within a short time-frame (two or three years). Another institution for the mentally ill is a community-based halfway house.
Usage examples of "psychiatric hospital".
I got off the freeway just short of the Ventura County line and, following the arrow on the sign that said CANYON OAKS PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL, swung south over a concrete bridge.
When Driver heard the rumors, he contacted a psychiatric hospital in Little Rock and drove Damien there himself.
None of this is unusual, of course, and every psychiatric hospital has an Ernie or two.
Tulare Vocational Rehabilitation taught Gumb to be a tailor during his years at the psychiatric hospital.
Because of his outstanding service record he was sent to a psychiatric hospital in Kent, from which he escaped and somehow - God knows how - made his way to Singapore.
When you work in a psychiatric hospital you learn some of the jargon.
A forensic psychiatric hospital is a five-star hotel compared to prison, especially if you’.
Anne when she'd driven Hrubek and several other patients to a bookstore in a mall near Trevor Hill Psychiatric Hospital.
He'd spent most of the holiday itself at Murray Hill Psychiatric Hospital in Manhattan and the Friday after it in his father's office, listening to the old man argue persuasively, then insist belligerently, that his son take up internal medicine-going so far as to condition his continuing financial support of the young man's education on his choice of specialty.
Suppose he sneaks her out of your precious `psychiatric hospital' while Bill Cory is taking one of his permanent naps.
Elizabeth's was the Federal government psychiatric hospital in the District of Columbia.