A lot will depend on what country / region your in, hospitals available to you and how your medical insurance works - global or private pay, because these are all factors.

I'll talk specifically about my experiences in ON Canada. I've been hospitalized twice. First time I was at risk of suicide. I was in 8 weeks. Length of hospital stay also really varies some will only do really short term stabilization admissions, others are geared to more longer term admissions and doing therapy, mine is the later.

The second time I was admited I wasn't suicidal, I was just very depressed - that time I was in a month.

There's been a shift at my hospital in the 3 years since I was last admitted, towards when at all possible keeping people out of the hospital. Now you have to pretty much be suicidal to get admitted - that's not true of all hospital's just mine, but I think it's because it's the region's biggest specialty psychiatric hospital so they get all the acute cases that the other hospitals can't handle. But they have tons of outpatient programs that they refer less severe cases to.

I'm currently in a partial hospitalization program, that's run by an different hospital. It's specifically for depression and anxiety. I'm in it because my addictions Dr. thought I needed more support and to be inpatient, my psychiatrist didn't think I needed to be inpatient, so as a compromise I wound up in day hospital. I'd say that the functioning level of people in the program really varies, but at a minimum they're all capable of getting up, bathing, dressing, eating, getting themselves to the hospital and participating in the program. Mine's a 3 week program 9-2. Most patients are then refered to a second stage partial hospitalization program within the same hospital but at a different location that's 2 days a week for 10 weeks, and is more focussed on either depression or anxiety.

So it really varies by where you are / resources.

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