The clinical research ward as a therapeutic community: incompatibilities.

The authors discuss the numerous incompatibilities between the clinical research ward, with its emphasis on the collection of baseline and treatment data, and the therapeutic milieu environment, with its emphasis on an open door, team orientation, and nonauthoritarianism. They posit that the two orientations may be mutually destructive and that the therapeutic milieu may not be the best treatment setting for patients with schizophrenic or certain affective disorders. Two case histories illustrating these ideas are included.