Mental health delivery system in general hospitals attached to medical colleges.

The psychiatric patient care facilities and services of fifty seven general hospitals attached to medical colleges in India were studied based on data pertaining to 1988. The average bed strength was 25 beds while the average length of stay was 21 days. Functional psychotics formed 62% of the discharged patients. On the average, 2914 new psychiatric outpatients were registered per hospital and follow up attendance was 3.2 times more than the number of new cases. The implications of these findings and the method of obtaining average length of stay are discussed.