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The modern psychiatric hospital was born from the closure of asylums, a shift marked most visibly by drastic reductions in bed numbers. What has gone less acknowledged is how this decline has persisted uninterrupted since the break with the asylum model. This trend reflects a broader critique of psychiatric hospitals, anchored in five key arguments: reducing coercion, stigma, isolation, patient regression, and health care costs. This essay offers a counter-critique of such narratives, while exposing the detrimental consequences of such a negative perception of hospitalization.