Behavior Change and Achieving Hospital Discharge in Persons with Severe, Chronic Psychiatric Disabilities

Abstract

Economic and political pressures have led state governments to shrink and close long-term psychiatric inpatient units in favor of community-based treatment. These pressures present inpatient clinicians with an opportunity to examine their clinical practices and question whether the focus of treatment addresses the behaviors most relevant to helping patients achieve discharge and maintain community tenure. The social learning approach of Gordon Paul is the empirically validated treatment of choice for long-term psychiatric inpatients. In this study, we compared changes in daily functioning of sixty-four chronic psychiatric inpatients treated in two rehabilitation programs based extensively on Gordon Paul's social learning approach. Half of the participants were successfully discharged from the hospital. Analysis found both similarities and differences in behavioral improvements between the groups. These results provide some clarity to the relationship between selfcare skills, participation in programs, maladaptive behaviors, and achieving hospital discharge for chronically hospitalized individuals.