Brief hospitalization: two-year follow-up.

This article presents the long-term follow-up effects of brief vs standard hospitalization on families. One hundred seventy-five newly admitted inpatients who lived with their families were randomly assigned to standard inpatient care, brief hospitalization followed by the availability of transitional day care, and brief hospitalization. All patients were offered follow-up outpatient treatment. Initial length of stay was 11 days for both brief hospitalization groups and 60 days for the standard group. The long-term results generally indicate little differential effect between treatments. When differences occurred, they generally favored the brief groups. For example, at one year the standard group families were judged to have a higher overall level of burden than the brief-day families. The findings suggest that patients are more likely to be rehospitalized because of their psychopathology than because of family burden.