How Can You Tell If Your Area Needs More Psychiatric Beds?

A couple of months ago, my colleague Monica E. Oss wrote about the need for residential addiction treatment beds and whether current supply meets the consumer demand (see How Much Residential Addiction Treatment Capacity Do We Need?). There is another topic of frequent disagreement – does the U.S. need more inpatient psychiatric beds? And if so, what kind? Acute stabilization beds or long-term care beds?

Since the 1950s, the number of state psychiatric beds have decreased by 97% due to a public policy shift towards community-based care (see Going, Going, Gone Trends and Consequences of Eliminating State Psychiatric . . .