Associations between staff feelings toward patients and treatment outcome at psychiatric treatment homes.

This paper presents, as part of a national Swedish research project, a study of associations between staff feelings toward patients and treatment outcome at 23 small psychiatric inpatient units. The outcome was measured with a composite scale based on structured interviews. Staff feelings were reported on a feeling checklist. Few and scattered correlations were found between staff feelings and treatment outcome when the whole group of patients was analyzed together. More meaningful patterns were found when data for psychotic and borderline patients were analyzed separately. For psychotic patients, positive outcome was associated with low levels of negative feelings throughout treatment. For borderline patients, positive outcome was associated with negative feelings at the beginning of treatment, followed by strong positive feelings in the later part. Staff feelings were more strongly associated with outcome for borderline patients than for psychotic patients. Patients with different structural diagnoses need different kinds of staff "feeling milieus."