The hospitals were closed at a time when new antipsychotic drugs made medicating patients in the community seem a humane alternative to long-term hospitalization.

If hospitalization is required, the average hospital stay is around one to two weeks, with only a small number receiving long-term hospitalization.

During that period, experts would determine whether long-term involuntary hospitalization is needed.

More than once he requested long-term hospitalization at Creedmoor, the state hospital nearby.

At the time, new antipsychotic drugs made medicating patients in the community seem a humane alternative to long-term hospitalization.

Rather than pay for long-term hospitalization, it will pay to buy wheelchair ramps and a specially equipped van so that an employee can live at home.

They eased the bizarre and disruptive symptoms associated with some types of mental illness, permitting some patients to return home and others to be treated without long-term hospitalization.

Such outpatient treatment, said Robert D. Haas, the company's president and chief executive, not only is often more humane than long-term hospitalization, but is less costly as well.

But he said that the anticipated savings from a drop in short-term and long-term hospitalizations should cover that expense.

In 1988, Congress passed a bill that offered the elderly increased protection from the catastrophic costs of long-term hospitalization.