Abstract
Analyzing personal-social characteristics of mental patients for the purpose of developing an equation to predict length of hospitalization has received considerable attention in the psychiatric and psychological literature. Severity of crime, gender, race, marital status, education and occupation have all been identified at one time or another as salient predictor variables. A lack of clearly defined procedures to operationally define variables, particularly crime severity, and a failure to cross-validate findings have resulted in widely disparate conclusions that appear ambiguous and idiosyncratic. The current investigation attempted to correct these two methodological limitations and discovered a three-variable prediction model accounting for 34% of the variance in length of hospital stay, nearly three times that which has been accounted for in any previous study. Despite this significant improvement, the use of a prediction model should be limited to providing information regarding hospitalization prognosis and should not be used as a discharge decision-making instrument.
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