A framework for evaluating psychiatric rehabilitation practices

Deinstitutionalization spawned numerous psychiatric rehabilitation interventions, but only a small number have endured for decades and spread widely. This article identifies a concise set of 10 criteria to examine ethical, scientific, practical, and policy elements of highly successful interventions.

Based on 50 years of psychiatric rehabilitation literature, we examined three exemplary, enduring practices-assertive community treatment, Individual Placement and Support, and Housing First-for evidence related to the 10 common criteria.

Psychiatric rehabilitation has had a firm grounding in ethics, client-centeredness, implementation science, and outcomes research. Policy and funding have followed. We identified 10 criteria that incorporate these values: recovery, model clarity, fidelity, effectiveness, enduring effects, cost-effectiveness, feasibility, scalability/sustainability, policy/funding, and adaptability. All three practices are guided by validated fidelity scales, have strong evidence for effectiveness, and are feasible to implement, but they vary on other criteria.

In varying degrees, assertive community treatment, Individual Placement and Support, and Housing First are practices meeting most of the 10 criteria in a newly developed framework aimed at broadening the criteria for evaluating psychiatric rehabilitation programs to encompass both scientific and pragmatic, real-world considerations. This framework establishes an objective framework to guide the prioritization of services for people with mental health conditions. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).