Public and Private Behavioral Health Services - Coursework Example

Different Philosophies of Psychiatric and General Hospitals The Different Philosophies of Psychiatric and General Hospitals Mental disorder, a condition that was indescribable in the 19th century, though, its effects and symptoms were vivid. In the late, 1990’s William Sweetzer managed to come up with a skeleton definition that tried to explain the mental disorder, and subsequently more comprehensive definitions have since emerged. Irrespective of the words selected to describe the mental disorder, they all revolve around, a psychological anomaly that relates to how a person feels, acts, thinks and perceives things in his/her environment (In, 2014).

This condition affects people of all cadre, race, and gender, implying that it is indiscriminate, and this is the basis of this papers subject matter. People suffering from mental disorder need much attention, supervision, and specialized care (Ince, 2010). When people with sufficient financial resources suffer from mental illness, they get people or institutions that can take good care of their psychiatric needs. On the other hand, when those without sufficient financial resources fall to this illness most of their time is spent at home with little care and most of the times they stray in the public because of the mental disturbances.

Private and public behavior health service providers are classically in the same business but with very different objectives and philosophy of work. The difference being due to the nature of the condition as described above, the demands that associated with it and the effects of the condition (In, 2014). Public facilities goals are to have people suffering from this disorder committed to getting help, but most importantly to ensure that they do not end up harming themselves or others in the public places since they may not have people to watch over them all round the clock.

Private institutions on the other end have a mission to offer fulltime care and their time on behalf of the patient’s families, who would otherwise have to spend their time taking care of the patients (Freeth, 2007).These fundamental differences between these patients social and economic status, have created the two institutions. This explains why the public behavioral health service facilities lag behind the private institutions in provision of care for mental disorders. The private institutions are in existence to fill a want, whose willingness and ability to pay prevails, while the public behavior health services providers simply exist to contain a menace of mentally disturbed individuals causing harm or offensiveness to the public.

Psychiatric vs. general hospital organization structureAccording to McNeese-Smith (2003), the general outline of the division of mental health, developmental disabilities, and addictive diseases differs from that of general service hospital. However, the differences are not very complicated. The general hospital structure is a line organization structure having the flow of authority running vertically from top to bottom. The psychiatric institutions have a functional structure, having different centers of authority arising from a different function such as child support service or the aging services.

In my opinion, both the psychiatric and the general hospital being institutions that run on multiple systems and the work output of one system could be the input/raw material in another; it were better if both the organizations adopted a structure with a central command. The benefit of a central control is the improved coordination a crucial aspect of hospital efficiency in provision of the different necessary care needed by the patients.ReferencesFreeth, R. (2007). Humanising psychiatry and mental health care: The challenge of the person-centred approach.

Oxford: Radcliffe.Hospital management: Pub. in the interest of executives in every department of hospital work. (1920). Chicago: Crain Pub. Co.In Gabbard, G. O., & American Psychiatric Association,. (2014). Gabbards treatments of psychiatric disorders.Ince, L. P. (2010). Behavioral psychology in rehabilitation medicine: Clinical applications. Baltimore [u.a.: Williams & Wilkins.McNeese-Smith, D. K. (January 01, 2003). Treatment for substance abuse in Australia: a comparison of public and private programs.

 The International Journal of Psychiatric Nursing Research, 9, 1, 1025-38.