Mental Hospitalization of Troublesome Youth: An Analysis of Skyrocketing Admission Rates

Rates of admission' of children and adolescents to inpatient mental health facilities have increased steadily during this century. Although deinstitutionalization2 policies of recent decades successfully reduced adolescent admission rates to state and county mental hospitals, adolescent admission rates to psychiatric units of private hospitals have jumped dramatically, increasing over four-fold between 1980 and 1984.3 In addition, data reveal that rates of psychiatric admission4 of children and adolescents to private hospitals are not only rising, but are doing so at a steadily accelerating pace.5 In this note, I contend that the rising rates of psychiatric admission of children and adolescents reflect an increasing use of hospitalization to manage a population for whom such intervention is typically inap-