ABSTRACT
Community placement may be possible if adequate circumstances are available, but commitment is likely if the psychiatric ward proves the only viable place to accommodate the person in question. Commitment hearings, then, orient to the alternative ways of dealing with psychiatrically troubled and troublesome persons; the practical issue is the "placement of insanity". Research on mental hospitalization has increasingly converged on the notion that most mental patients are admitted to psychiatric hospitals because their situations in the community have become untenable. Commonsense assumptions about how situational factors ameliorate or worsen psychiatric distress provide the basis for courtroom arguments regarding the tenability of patients' community living situations. The ability to provide basic necessities is a prime consideration in all commitment decisions relating to grave disability.
