Integrating psychosocial rehabilitation into the hospital psychiatric service

Psychosocial rehabilitation services, while sorely needed by patients with prolonged mental illness, are not usually offered as part of hospital psychiatry. The authors describe the Veterans Resource Program (VRP), a hospital-based psychosocial rehabilitation program, as a model for introducing rehabilitation services into a hospital psychiatry system. Its perceived residential treatment environment was found to be more practically oriented and to provide more autonomy for patients than did an intensive treatment unit, while still possessing many supportive relationship characteristics. The authors found that the VRP patients had very low dropout and relapse rates; VRP patients also had better recidivism and employment rates compared with baseline rates and with patients in two comparison programs. These results suggest that integrating rehabilitation into hospital psychiatry improves patient care.