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Family Admission Decisions As a Therapeutic Tool
Author(s) -
BYNGHALL JOHN,
BRUGGEN PETER
Publication year - 1974
Publication title -
family process
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.011
H-Index - 74
eISSN - 1545-5300
pISSN - 0014-7370
DOI - 10.1111/j.1545-5300.1974.00443.x
Subject(s) - referral , duty , leverage (statistics) , psychology , mental hospital , unit (ring theory) , medicine , psychiatry , nursing , political science , law , computer science , mathematics education , machine learning
The decision admit a disturbed adolescent to a mental hospital is all too often made by a hard‐pressed duty psychiatrist, late in the day, but early in his training. The effects of this decision may well reverberate down the generations. At the Unit for younger adolescents at Hill End Hospital, St. Albans, Hertfordshire, England (5), the family, not the psychiatrist, makes the decision. This approach is based on the observation that when families eject their youngsters, parental authority is often disintegrating. Referral for admission provides a golden opportunity, not only for reversing the ejection process, but also for forging, on the anvil of a profoundly important decision, a more viable family authority structure. Therapeutic leverage is made available at the very heart of the family problem.