A crucial factor in community program success: the extended psychosocial kinship system.

A crucial factor in community program success is the program's capacity to foster and strengthen an extended psychosocial network of neighbors, friends, and associates at work or school, as well as the extended kinship system. The chronically hospitalized patient and the young, isolated, acutely psychotic adult are both in need of an enhanced psychosocial system when entering a community program. The experience of Berkeley House, a psychiatric halfway house, is related as an example of a program that has achieved successful community tenure for its patients through the creation of an extended psychosocial kinship system. Four principal ways in which the system was sustained through the Berkeley House program are described: (1) through the ex-resident program; (2) through housing arrangements; (3) through work; and (4) through a variety of avocational and social groupings. The extended psychosocial matrix formed by overlapping groups is illustrated.