Technical advantages of general hospital psychiatry are well known: laboratory facilities, personnel recruitment, referral and follow-up opportunities. Increasing social acceptance leads to earlier case detection and referral. Psychotherapeutic advantages of the community's proximity include minimizing the patient's social isolation by involving and focusing on transactions of family, community and group. Hospitalization is seen, not as curative, but as a therapeutic intervention permitting the patient's return to the community prepared for follow-up treatment.
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Detre et al. (1963) studied this question.
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