Family Bonding of the Mentally Ill: An Analysis of Family Visits with Residents of Board and Care Homes

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Abstract
Early studies of family visits to hospitalized mental patients suggested that family bonds tend to unravel as the chronicity of the patient''s illness becomes established. The present study examines visitation outside of the hospital for persons living in the community. Hypotheses are developed to explain variation among families in level of involvement with mentally ill relatives, and tested with data from a recent study of residents of board and care homes in seven states. Visitation, including both visits by family members to the board and care home and visits by disabled members to the family residences, is used to indicate level of family involvement. Tobit regressions within categories of visitation suggest that family involvement decreases with distance, physical disability, and impairment, but increases with need for services. Sharp differences in visiting patterns are found between residents who had at least one psychiatric hospitalization and residents who had never been hospitalized for mental illness. These differences suggest that the bonding of families to the chronically mentally ill is quite different from the bonding of families to patients with organic brain syndromes.