Assessing the service needs of the discharged psychiatric patient.

In recent years the chronically mentally ill have come to be regarded as a heterogeneous population with a diversity and multiplicity of needs. Social workers assessed a cohort of psychiatric patients being discharged from two state hospitals in terms of their postdischarge service needs. The findings confirmed that these patients needed not only basic mental health services of chemotherapy and counseling but also social rehabilitative services and specialized services such as substance abuse counseling. The data have been utilized by agencies and state and county governmental entities to document the need for new programs and to reorder service priorities. To start a planning process, recommendations on the study findings are being distributed to mental health and human service agencies and family coalitions on a communitywide basis.