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Section 2: Inpatient Groups

Groups within Groups: Fractals and the Successes and Failure of a Child Inpatient Psychiatric Unit

Pages 302-314
Published online: 28 Dec 2017
 
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An inpatient psychiatric unit in a general hospital allows one to look at the interrelationships of milieu, therapeutic and administrative groups, and group treatment as they operate within larger organizational and societal matrices. This article describes a children's psychiatric unit grounded in transactional analysis, its successes in terms of treatment, and its ultimate demise because of external economic pressures. The treatment of a 10-year-old with Cotard's syndrome–a rare condition characterized by the belief that one is dead–is used to demonstrate the synergistic effects of multiple interdependent therapeutic groups.

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Author information

James R. Allen

James R. Allen, M.D., FRCP(C), M.P.H., is Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and Rainbolt Family Chair of Child Psychiatry, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma City, U.S.A., and president-elect of the International Transactional Analysis Association.

Donna Hammond

Donna R. Hammond, LCSW, returned to college and completed a master's degree in social work as a “returning student” in 1991. She worked for almost 10 years on an inpatient mental health unit (described in this article), five of those years with Dr. James Allen. Ms. Hammond is an assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, where she teaches and supervises medical students, residents, fellows, and social work students.