Evaluating outcomes of rehabilitation for severe mental illness.

Abstract

Improving the quality of life of individuals with severe mental illness has been the focus of considerable research. With advances in treatments for severe mental illness, particularly in psychiatric rehabilitation, evaluating outcomes has become increasingly important. Given the complex and multidimensional nature of severe mental illness, outcome evaluation of psychiatric rehabilitation is particularly difficult. This article addresses issues in evaluating psychiatric rehabilitation outcomes, including key outcome domains, selection of methods and measures, and meaningful use of results. Continuing conceptual and methodological issues are discussed. Also, future directions are explored, including evaluating multidimensional treatment effects and interactions and building an integrated understanding of all of the outcomes involved in psychiatric rehabilitation. 1 The term psychiatric rehabilitation may be confused with psychosocial rehabilitation, and the two are sometimes used interchangeably. In practice, both are sometimes used as a contraction of biopsychosocial rehabilitation. However, psychosocial rehabilitation sometimes specifically refers to a particular type of program, associated with specific prototypes, such as Fountain House in New York and Thresholds in Chicago (McEvoy, Scheifler, & Frances, 1999).

Mediation analysis of critical time intervention for persons living with serious mental illnesses: Assessing the role of family relations in reducing psychiatric rehospitalization.

“…Findings from this current study support the idea that CTI may modestly improve frequency of family contact and perceived quality of family relationship, and psychiatric re-hospitalization may be reduced through improved satisfaction with family relations. There is growing emphasis on the use of multidimensional rather than singular measures to assess outcomes among those with serious mental illness (Iyer, Rothmann, Vogler, & Spaulding, 2005). Our study contributes to these efforts by advancing knowledge about of the important function of family relations, and a possible mechanism through which CTI can help persons living with serious mental illness avoid unnecessary psychiatric re-hospitalization.…”

Measuring outcomes in outpatient child psychiatry: Reliable improvement, deterioration, and clinically significant improvement

“…For most disorders, psychiatry cannot use biological markers or physical indicators (like blood pressure or BMI) to assess treatment outcomes (Blais et al, 2011;Iyer, Rothmann, Vogler & Spaulding, 2005). Instead, mental health professionals usually rely on subjective judgments for monitoring patient progress.…”

An Evaluation of Psychosocial Rehabilitation Facilities for Homeless Mentally Ill in India

“…Kumar, K. V., Sekar, K., Murthy, R. S. (2003) documented an evaluation report of The Banyan, an organisation for the rehabilitation of homeless mentally ill women in Chennai. Iyer, Rothmann, Vogler, and Spaulding (2005) discussed the need for comprehensive assessment of outcomes in rehabilitation with advances in treatments for severe mental illness. The outcome measures identified were symptoms, cognitive measures, functional measures, quality of life, goal attainment, patient satisfaction etc.…”