Rehabilitation outcome of long-term hospital patients left behind by deinstitutionalization.

In 1979 a Massachusetts state hospital initiated a plan to transfer 54 long-term residents of two wards to the community through a series of increasingly independent working and living arrangements. This study assesses the patients' residential and vocational status and living skills over a five-year period beginning in February 1979. The patients demonstrated a significant increase in living independence, but only eight were able to live continuously in the community after their discharge, and 24 never left the hospital. Overall, vocational status did not improve, and living skills improved only slightly. Living skills and vocational status were predictive of living independence. The authors identify several steps that the mental health field should take to promote success among chronic patients, deinstitutionalized or not.