BMJ : British medical journal
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Randomized Controlled Trial Clinical Trial
Randomised controlled trial of two models of care for discharged psychiatric patients.
To compare the clinical outcome and costs of care of psychiatric patients allocated to community multidisciplinary teams or to hospital based care programmes after discharge from inpatient care. ⋯ Aftercare by community teams for psychiatric patients with severe mental illness has a similar outcome to hospital based aftercare but with fewer admissions to hospital. When psychiatric bed requirements are insufficient for a population, however, neither form of aftercare is effective as greater use of hospital beds elsewhere swamps any advantage of community care programmes, with disintegration and discontinuity of psychiatric services leading to escalating costs.