Summary
When illness is socially defined, the task of therapy is to enable the patient to move from a sick role to one of maximal social functioning. In a day hospital setting, methods are explored to involve a patient with his family both directly and indirectly. Thus the patient is supported both in the treatment milieu and when he is at home. Not only the patient, but the family, is vulnerable at this time and each must be helped to make parallel and complementary shifts in interpersonal behavior. To view the family solely as a resource for the support of the ill member and his treatment is to fail to accept the need of the family as a whole for reorganization and strengthening.
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Moss, S.Z., Moss, M.S. Mental illness, partial hospitalization, and the family. Clin Soc Work J 1, 168–176 (1973). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01786038
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01786038