Background: Short-stay psychiatric hospitalization is a necessary resource to treat mental disorders with severe decompensation that cannot be resolved outpatiently. Knowledge of your results helps in clinical and administrative management. This study aims to evaluate the evolution of hospital indicators, sociodemographic and clinics characteristics of inpatients in a short-stay unit of psychiatry. Material and Methods: Longitudinal, retrospective, trend study was conducted in a universe of 4,563 egress of short-stay psychiatric unit of Chile, for 14 years, from 01/07/2005 to 30/06/2019. Hospital indicators, sociodemographic and clinical variables were evaluated. Results: during the period under study: The egress decreased, the average days were prolonged, the occupational index increased and the turnover rate decreased. A low number of patients, predominantly socioeconomic and psychosocial adversities, were frequently re-hospitalized. The greater the number of hospitalizations longest stay. Administrative and judicial hospitalizations were increased; the latter with the highest average stay. Hospitalization of males, adolescents, young people and older adults increased. Communes and primary care center with a greater population, proximity and access predominated. It remained frequency of schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders and personality disorders, doubled affective disorders, tripled substance disorders, doubled dual pathology, and personality disorder was common in comorbidity with substance disorder and affective disorders Conclusions: strategies would be required with the Judicial System and Health Service, implement adolescent unity and addiction unit, and strengthen multidisciplinary care for older adults.