Previous studies have pointed towards social factors as important determinants of psychiatric hospitalization. To facilitate intensive study of these factors, a group assessment procedure was set up at the point of referral for admission to Dingleton Hospital, Scotland, which involved the patient, his family, pertinent community members and members of the hospital staff. When this procedure was carried out with 104 successive male admissions, it was found that the request for admission typically was the direct result of an unresolved social crisis which we named the crisis of admission. Typically, this precipitant crisis was preceded by a series of life crises involving the impingement of such common events as separation, death, physical illness or migration on the identified patient and his family. These antecedent crises were usually not resolved, each unresolved crisis contributing to the next and leading eventually to the crisis of admission. Typically the request for admission was another attempt to deal with the social forces highlighted in earlier unresolved crises by labeling the identified patient and his illness as the source of the family or community disturbance and by extruding him from his family and the community group through admission to a psychiatric hospital. Our experience with these 104 patients and their families suggests that psychiatric hospitalization without elucidation of the social processes leading to admission and appropriate social intervention in these processes is a disservice to the patient, his family, and the community in which they live. A model for such social assessment and social prescription at the point of intake for the individual designated as the patient, his family unit, and the community in which he lives, is presented.