Halfway houses for the mentally ill and alcoholics: a 1973 survey.

A survey of halfway houses made in October 1973 identified 209 facilities primarily for psychiatric patients and 597 for alcoholics. The facilities for alcoholics average fewer employees than the psychiatric halfway houses, and proportionately more of them are recovered patients. The alcoholism facilities serve older clients, most of them males. Patients admitted to psychiatric halfway houses are more likely to enter from a hospital than from the community, and they have longer stays than the alcoholic patients. The largest percentage of both groups return to independent living; 15 per cent of the psychiatric patients are readmitted to hospitals.