Brief Treatment and Crisis Intervention Advance Access originally published online on December 11, 2008
Brief Treatment and Crisis Intervention 2008 8(4):342-351; doi:10.1093/brief-treatment/mhn021
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Mental Health Practitioners Collaboration with the Families of Individuals with Schizophrenia: A Mixed Method Study
From the School of Social Work, Eastern Washington University
Contact author: Blake Beecher, Assistant Professor, Eastern Washington University, 310 Senior Hall, Cheney, WA 99004. E-mail: bbeecher{at}ewu.edu.
The purpose of this mixed methods study was to further the understanding of mental health practitioners level of collaboration with the families of individuals with schizophrenia in association with the rates of psychiatric hospitalizations and residential crisis. Findings indicate that practitioners of all disciplines (N = 120) rarely collaborate with families of individuals with schizophrenia, and when they do, it frequently is in a time of crisis/hospitalization. The hospitalization rates of individuals with schizophrenia on the practitioners' caseloads (N = 1,183) had significantly higher hospitalization and residential crisis usage rates and more mean hospitalization and residential crisis days than clients with all other diagnoses (N = 4,715), indicating a need for interventions that reduce hospitalization rates and shift from a reactive paradigm of treatment to a more proactive and preventative paradigm of treatment.
KEY WORDS: families, collaboration, mental health practitioners, hospitalization