Correspondence of staff-client evaluations of discharge readiness and nontreatment therapeutic events

Abstract

A follow‐up telephone survey of clients discharged from a community mental health clinic indicated a high degree of agreement between contacted clients and their clinician‐advisors concerning the readiness of clients for discharge, the number and effect of nontreatment therapeutic events, and the frequency with which clients seek alternate psychiatric services after discharge. Contacted and noncontacted groups were similar, except that the latter group included significantly more clients who had initiated termination against staff advice. It was recommended that future discharge studies concentrate more on contacting the difficult‐to‐reach clients in order to obtain a more accurate impression of a clinic's treatment effectiveness.