Psychiatric hospitals are clinical care centres for the treatment and care of people with mental health disorders, behavioural problems, and addiction issues. They vary in the type of care and services they provide. Some may provide outpatient care while some might specialize in inpatient housing and advanced long-term care, especially in addiction cases. Their focus is on providing specialized care in a controlled and monitored environment, treating mental health issues, and aassisting in living with their disability in an open society. These hospitals may be public, private or funded institutions where quality care is given to people struggling with mental health issues in the best possible way, provide a safe environment and adapt them to live as far as a normal life they can possibly have.
In Tiruvallur psychiatric hospital care and services depend on the severity of the health issue, age of the patient, physical condition and associated medical issues, and finally how long the treatment is expected to continue.
• Critical Stabilization Units: For severely ill patients with associated medical conditions and is much like the intensive care unit. It is for emergency management with a few beds and short term admission to deal with the crisis at hand.
• Inpatient care: For medium-term management of illness where admissions are for relatively short term and treatment response monitored and a plan for discharge is made. These areas are divided into locked or open areas and patients are allowed to mingle with others depending on the stage of their illness. Many psychiatric hospitals have separate juvenile wards or zones for minors and they may or may not mingle with adult inpatients.
• Outpatient care: These types of services are for people who need very less supervision and can manage their own medication, and care and lead a normal life with their issues. Their medication monitoring can be done at regular intervals and progress is recorded.
• Long term in-housing or Residential services: This type of service provides rehabilitation to people struggling to go unsupervised and the goal is to stabilize medication and transition them to outpatients. They can house patients for 6 months to 3 years.
Although all hospitals do not provide all the facilities, they provide quality care to patients struggling with various mental health, behavioral or addiction problems.