The purpose of this book is to present an integrated approach to the treatment of the chronic psychiatric patient living in the com munity. This requires that topics as diverse as pharmacokinetics, psychotherapy and community organization be appropriately coor dinated. Such an approach is partly complicated by the wide range of differences among patients, in terms of social skills, intellectual capacity and psychiatric diagnosis. In addition, unclear, insular or overlapping roles of various mental health disciplines further con found integrated treatment efforts. Given such complexity, any single clinician's point of view is sub ject to the distortion inherent in specialization. Too often a volume in the field of mental health focuses either on only one aspect or presents only one clinician's unique perspective of a task that is, in fact, multifaceted. We have tried to avoid this pitfall by having representatives from many of the concerned professions present a variety of treatment approaches and associated issues in one text. Further, the editors have attempted to illuminate the relevant clinical and/or administrative interrelationship between the subjects of each section through a succinct introductory commentary. The book is divided into five sections. The first section represents an attempt to address some of the interactive sociological, psycho logical and pharmacological background issues common to all at tempts at treatment of this population.

Mental Health Outcome Measures provides an authoritative review of measurement scales currently available to assess the outcomes of mental health service intervention. The excerpt of summaries by leading writers in the field assess the contributions of scale in areas including mental state examination, quality of life, patient satisfaction, needs assessments, measurement of service cost, global functioning scales, and social disability. These chapters provide a critical appraisal of how far such scales have been shown to be reliable and valid, and provide valuable insights in to their ease of use. This book will provide an invaluable reference manual for those who want to take research on mental health services, and for those who need to interpret this research for policy, planning, and clinical practice.

Discusses the characteristics of psychiatrically disabled young adults and the unique problems they present in different types of communities. Evaluates many types of treatment, including crisis intervention and drug therapy, and a variety of program designs for rehabilitating young adults.

Bringing together treatment and referral advice from existing guidelines, this text aims to improve access to services and recognition of common mental health disorders in adults and provide advice on the principles that need to be adopted to develop appropriate referral and local care pathways.

There have always been homeless people in the United States, but their plight has only recently stirred widespread public reaction and concern. Part of this new recognition stems from the problem's prevalence: the number of homeless individuals, while hard to pin down exactly, is rising. In light of this, Congress asked the Institute of Medicine to find out whether existing health care programs were ignoring the homeless or delivering care to them inefficiently. This book is the report prepared by a committee of experts who examined these problems through visits to city slums and impoverished rural areas, and through an analysis of papers written by leading scholars in the field.

Case Management-what is it and how does it fit in the system of mental health care for severely mentally ill patients? Four popular case management systems, each emerging from a distinct theory of human growth and development, answer these long debated questions. Case Management for Mentally Ill Patientswill prove highly useful to mental health students and practitioners, university educators, and professionals providing hands-on help in obtaining a wide range of services including insurance, housing, rehabilitation, general medical psychiatric care, legal services and entitlements, and employment. Maxine Harrisand Helen Bergmanare co-founders and co-directors of Community Connections, Inc., in Washington, DC.

The distinguished historian of medicine Gerald Grob analyzes the post-World War II policy shift that moved many severely mentally ill patients from large state hospitals to nursing homes, families, and subsidized hotel rooms--and also, most disastrously, to the streets. On the eve of the war, public mental hospitals were the chief element in the American mental health system. Responsible for providing both treatment and care and supported by major portions of state budgets, they employed more than two-thirds of the members of the American Psychiatric Association and cared for nearly 98 percent of all institutionalized patients. This study shows how the consensus for such a program vanished, creating social problems that tragically intensified the sometimes unavoidable devastation of mental illness. Examining changes in mental health care between 1940 and 1970, Grob shows that community psychiatric and psychological services grew rapidly, while new treatments enabled many patients to lead normal lives. Acute services for the severely ill were expanded, and public hospitals, relieved of caring for large numbers of chronic or aged patients, developed into more active treatment centers. But since the main goal of the new policies was to serve a broad population, many of the most seriously ill were set adrift without even the basic necessities of life. By revealing the sources of the euphemistically designated policy of "community care," Grob points to sorely needed alternatives. Originally published in 1991. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.