The most common reason for admission to a psychiatric hospital is “person is a danger to themselves or others”. The average length of stay in a psychiatric hospital is about one week.
Some clever person might ask: “Hey, don’t most psychiatric medicines require more than a week to take effect?” Good question! The answer is “yes”. Antidepressants classically take four weeks. Lithium and antipsychotics are more complicated, but the textbooks will still tell you a couple of weeks in both cases. And yet people are constantly being brought to psychiatric hospitals for dangerousness, treated with medications for one week, and then sent off. What gives?
As far as I can tell, a lot of it is the medical equivalent of security theater.
Scott Alexander, “Reflections From The Halfway Point”, Slate Star Codex, 2015-06-29.
June 29, 2017
QotD: The medical equivalent of security theatre
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