Study of 50 states' forensic directors documents 76 percent growth in forensic hospital patients
The authors surveyed forensic directors in all 50 states and the District of Columbia and analyzed hospital data from 1999 through 2014. The number of forensic patients grew 76 percent nationally, and people sent for competency restoration made up the biggest share of that growth.
The paper also reports that 54 percent of responding states had faced legal threats or contempt over long waits for restoration services, and that state hospitals devoted roughly a third of their budgets to forensic patients, a share that rose as civil patients' share fell.
It is the peer-reviewed counterpart to the 2017 NASMHPD assessment of the same trend, and it shows that competency cases account for much of the shift toward forensic patients in state hospitals. It appeared online in 2019 and in print in 2020.
Source: Forensic patients in state psychiatric hospitals: 1999–2016 — CNS Spectrums, by Amanda Wik, Vera Hollen, William H. Fisher
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