The implementation of therapeutic community principles in acute care psychiatric hospital settings: an empirical analysis and recommendations to clinicians.

We applied therapeutic community principles to a contemporary acute care psychiatric treatment program and investigated the effects upon milieu treatment variables using the Ward Atmosphere Scale (WAS) as a measure. Significant differences were found between experimental and control units on several scales of the WAS following the introduction of program changes. These differences indicated that the introduction of therapeutic community principles in treatment programming enhanced milieu factors that are conducive to patient recovery.