Community mental health treatment: what works for whom?

The research literature does not establish with any consistency an integrated model of what type of patient functions best in what type of community setting. The findings do, however, identify the relationship of certain patient characteristics to re-hospitalization: number of prior hospitalizations, length of hospitalization and history of unemployment being positively related; educational level, occupational level, and race being unrelated; and sex, marital status, age, and diagnosis being inconsistently related. Also identified in the literature were those community programs that were found to be the most effective based on a review of four outcome measures including recidivism, symptomatology, social functioning, and employment.