Psychiatric decision making in the emergency room: a research overview

In an overview of the research on psychiatric decision making in the emergency room, the authors discuss studies done between 1963 and 1977, which suffered from an overreliance on univariate statistical techniques, problems with the reliability and validity of the instruments used for data collection, and the lack of alternatives to hospitalization for emergency room patients. More recent studies of emergency room decision making are then reviewed, with particular attention to those that had multivariate statistical designs. The article concludes with a synthesis of the research findings to date and recommends multivariate approaches and choices of variables for future studies.