Admission to an acute psychiatric ward

Not all people with mental health problems are cared for in the community all of the time, but pressure on beds means that short-term containment rather than therapeutic intervention is still the norm. Acute psychiatric services are failing both staff and patients, a problem confirmed by the findings of The Sainsbury Centre for Mental Health (Box 1). This article, the first of a three-part series drawing on the study's results, examines the reasons for this failure. The second article in the series will be published next week.