When do psychiatric hospitals become a pricey residential safety net?
Once people are hospitalized on psychiatric wards- whether because of increased symptoms of their illnesses or because it was the only way to get out of a bad living situation- there is an immediate emphasis on returning the person to the community as quickly as possible. Hospital beds are a very scarce and expensive resource. Costs of a thousand dollars per day or more are very common. Yet chronic mentally ill people often do or say whatever is necessary to get into the hospital because it may be the only way that they know to get help finding alternative housing. The number of hospitalizations that are ultimately prompted by the need for an apartment or a wish to move to a different one would be stunning to the uninitiated. It’s also extremely common for our clients to use hospitals when they’re broke. Some savvy clients even count on a couple of hospitalizations per year as a way to get extra income. When they’re discharged they may have a month or two of disability checks that they
