Assessing and developing readiness for psychiatric rehabilitation.
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Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to M D Farkas.
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Most mental health programs need technical assistance to develop effective psychiatric rehabilitation programs. This article discusses how psychiatric rehabilitation was introduced into three community mental health programs and describes the elements of a psychiatric rehabilitation program and the phases of a technical assistance process. A case study illustrates how technical assistance consultants can be trained to develop psychiatric rehabilitation programs. Barriers and facilitators to the technical assistance are discussed in the context of several other technical assistance studies.
Mental health settings serving the severely psychiatrically disabled or the long-term chronic client have begun developing a rehabilitation orientation in an attempt to increase their effectiveness with this group. The authors have, in an earlier work, described basic elements of a rehabilitation program. These elements have been refined. Forty rehabilitation-oriented community and hospital agencies were assessed in terms of the presence or absence of these elements of a rehabilitation approach. Results indicate that the programs in the agencies clearly value client involvement and a program focus on improving skill and resource utilization. These concepts, however, are only beginning to be systematically implemented in practice.
In 1979 a Massachusetts state hospital initiated a plan to transfer 54 long-term residents of two wards to the community through a series of increasingly independent working and living arrangements. This study assesses the patients' residential and vocational status and living skills over a five-year period beginning in February 1979. The patients demonstrated a significant increase in living independence, but only eight were able to live continuously in the community after their discharge, and 24 never left the hospital. Overall, vocational status did not improve, and living skills improved only slightly. Living skills and vocational status were predictive of living independence. The authors identify several steps that the mental health field should take to promote success among chronic patients, deinstitutionalized or not.