Psychiatric inpatient care in Japan is provided principally by private not-for-profit hospitals - which account for 90% of all inpatient beds - but also by public hospitals. Psychiatric inpatient bed numbers, and average length of stay (ALOS), have been falling steadily, although taken as reported ALOS and numbers of psychiatric patients are still high relative to the OECD average. When considering the typically reported ALOS (298 days, compared to an OECD average of 36 days) and psychiatric bed numbers (2.6 beds per 100 000 population, compared to the OECD average of 0.7) it is important to note that in Japan a high number of psychiatric care beds are utilised by long stay chronic patients which might not be reported under the psychiatric bed category by other OECD countries.