The de facto national system of psychiatric inpatient care. Piecing together the national puzzle.

National data regarding psychiatric inpatient episodes can be viewed in 2 ways. The normative method surveys the "specialty mental health sector." A more inclusive method includes smaller sites (e.g., the military), all of general hospital treatment (rather than only the psychiatric unit), residential treatment centers, and other residential care. The difference between the 2 methods represents approximately 725,000 episodes, at a direct cost of more than $6 billion. The more inclusive analysis of the years 1980 and 1985 reveals a strong shift to the private sector and an increase in inpatient care of children and youth that might be obscured by limiting national treatment statistics to the specialty mental health sector.