Date of Award

12-1-2001

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Psychology

Abstract

The present study contributes to a growing database demonstrating the efficacy of residential treatment care for individuals diagnosed with serious mental illness. This study is distinguished by its longitudinal collection of data at two-month intervals over an eight-month study duration. Nine individuals residing at a supportive residential care facility (Harvest Homes) were compared with 18 others receiving team-based outpatient case management mental health services (Prairie Harvest Foundation) over an eight- month period. Eighty-nine percent Prairie Harvest Foundation group and seventy-eight percent of the Harvest Home group were diagnosed with psychotic conditions. Six major dependent measure outcomes including level of symptomatology, psychosocial adjustment, life satisfaction, work success, and hospital recidivism rates were examined at two-month intervals over five recording periods.

Many different factors influence the assignment of treatment services to individuals presenting for mental health services around the nation, and the present design represented an uncontrolled quasi-experimental comparison of residential and team-based outpatient case management. The majority of participants in both groups identified positive aspects of treatment, and hospital recidivism rates were found to be low. Significant differences were not found between the two treatment groups on five of the six dependent measures. This occurred despite the significantly higher level of psychiatric symptoms observed among participants assigned to residential care.Residential care recipients seemed to show similar levels of quality of life, psychosocial adjustment, work success, hospital recidivism risk, and satisfaction with services as the team-based outpatients who were experiencing significantly lower levels of psychiatric symptomatology. However, these results should be interpreted with caution as sample size and small to medium effect sizes decreased the power of this study and may have contributed to the lack of significant results on five of the six dependent measures. There is a need for further examination of residential psychiatric care as a treatment modality.

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