New concepts of rehabilitation as applied to hiring the "mentally restored"

Traditional approaches assessing the employability of mental patients are based upon an erroneous concept of the process of mental restoration and start with a forbidding notion of hiring only the "mentally restored." These approaches make a mockery of the chances for employment of poor risk patients-those for whom the usual predictors of successful employment have no validity. New programs with a variety of poor risk groups, even chronically hospitalized patients, are cited invalidating the traditional approaches to employability. Dimensions common to these successful programs are presented. Suggestions for successful rehabilitation with poor risk groups are proposed.