Although the “chronically mentally ill” have become a subject of national concern and although differences among the young, old, and minorities have been recognized, sex differences have been largely ignored. The authors describe the experientially determined problems of long‐term mentally disabled women. Research is presented from a review of 320 hospital records of patients served in seven community and state hospitals throughout Michigan, encompassing client variables and service information. Significant sex differences were found for client age, marital status, living arrangement, diagnosis, functioning level, voluntary/involuntary status, admission information, medications, medical care and destination post‐discharge. Many of the results confirm stereotypes of sex differences in institutionalized populations (age, diagnosis, and so forth). Other results, such as more women living independently and no sex differences in violent behaviors, are contrary to popular assumptions. Using case studies, the authors further discuss the important issues suggested by the results, e.g., why women become psychiatric patients, discharge planning, and over‐medications. A plea is made for a greater amount and intensity of research on women with long‐term mental disabilities.
Acute psychiatric admissions to three state and three community hospitals from the same geographic areas were examined in terms of patient characteristics, services, and costs. Overall, patients in state hospitals were more likely than patients in community hospitals to be admitted involuntarily, to have bizarre or assaultive behaviors as a precipitating cause of admission, to have recent community mental health involvement, to be referred by family or friends, to be living in dependent care at admission, and to have police initiated admissions; differences on other variables such as prior psychiatric hospitalizations, or in-hospital behaviors were not significant. The length of stay was longer for state hospital patients who were also more likely to be discharged to an independent living situation. While actual costs per inpatient day were greater for community hospitals, the costs of treating patients in state hospitals, after reimbursements, were greater on both an inpatient day and episode basis. The average savings per inpatient day of treating all patients in community hospitals versus the hospitals they were in at the time of the study would be $7.38 per day. The conservative average cost savings per episode would be $440. This data suggests that it may be less expensive to the state to treat patients in community hospitals.
To determine whether patterning of pitch or duration contributes most to the recognition of melodic structures, tone sequences resembling musical patterns or melodies were used in a recognition memory task. Nine categories of pattern complexity were produced by using three different levels of average information per tone in each of the two dimensions. These categories of tone sequences were presented to groups of Ss and their recognition performance measured. Only patterning of pitch was a significant factor in recognition. Performance was better with larger values of average information per tone, but behavior at maximum values of pitch information suggested that the relationship between performance and pattern information is nonmonotonic.
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