Comparative effectiveness of day hospital and inpatient psychiatric treatment.

Employed a pre–posttreatment control group design to compare the treatment effects of partial hospitalization to those of full-time hospitalization. Ratings of home and community adjustment were obtained from community informants (relatives or close friends) for 2 groups of Ss: (a) 24 day-hospital clients (partial hospitalization condition) matched on age (average age 32 yrs), education, and intelligence with (b) 24 inpatient clients (full-time hospitalization condition), and from an unmatched sample of 79 consecutive inpatient admissions. Treatment outcome was measured by clients' pre- and postscores on the Personal Adjustment and Role Skills scale. Results show that all groups evidenced improvement 2 mo after treatment started, particularly on measures of symptom reduction. Although patterns of improvement were comparable for both settings in univariate data analyses, multiple discriminant function analysis indicated that the day hospital sample evidenced greater gains in attentiveness and in employment. Gains favoring the day hospital sample were more striking for the unmatched 3-group comparison than for the matched 2-group comparison. Findings indicate that partial hospitalization is an attractive alternative to inpatient psychiatric hospitalization. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)