Adolescent elopement from a psychiatric hospital. Multiple dimensions

The authors report an unusual epidemic of elopement from an adolescent ward of a psychiatric hospital and demonstrate the utility of the single case study method with the hospital ward as the unit of study. The authors found that elopement was associated with patient factors (such as the absence of the diagnosis of affective disorder and a previous history of running away from psychiatric treatment) and patient-therapist interaction factors (separations from treatment team members), both of which seemed to interact with the milieu. The authors discuss how the single case study permits examination of multiple levels of sociopsychological processes.