Tuesday, January 04, 2005

Serious rehabilitation   Article in the January APA Monitor - "Serious mental illness (SMI) affects 5.4 percent of the U.S. adult population each year, but only about 15 percent receive proper medication, counseling and community integration interventions, according to research in the Journal of Public Health (Vol. 92, No. 1). The other 25 percent who are treated at all receive high doses of medication that reduce their symptoms--but also compromise their life functioning and fail to address underlying problems. ... In particular, a number of treatment programs are drawing on the work of psychologists Gordon Paul, PhD, of the University of Houston, and Robert Lentz, PhD, a private consultant in Champaign, Ill., who in the 1970s developed a social learning method of rehabilitation. The method encourages patients to learn and demonstrate social skills that allow them to function in a community. Programs using the social learning approach teach outpatient clients coping skills, catch and tackle problems early, and even treat the most severely ill patients."