Effective Community Treatment of the Chronically Mentally III: What is Necessary?

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Abstract
This paper reviews research on the community treatment of the chronically mentally ill, in order to determine what services are necessary for deinstitutionalization to succeed with this population. Residential services, assistance in meeting basic needs, crisis intervention services, somatic therapies, problem‐solving outpatient contacts, and comprehensive psychosocial treatments are found to be necessary in order to achieve a number of commonly cited goals in the treatment of the chronically mentally ill. Furthermore, the way that services are delivered may be of equal importance to what services are made available. To be effective services must be delivered in a highly individualized manner, be made assertively available, be structured to maximize the provision of continuity of care, and be provided in an ongoing rather than time‐limited fashion. While clearly more services are needed than currently exist for the chronically mentally ill, it is suggested that treatment can be improved by altering the way in which existing services are delivered to this population.

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