Building teams and programs for effective rehabilitation

Carefully controlled, clinical research has shown psychiatric rehabilitation to significantly help persons with severe mental illness address their disabilities and obtain a higher quality of life. For psychiatric rehabilitation to yield its greatest effect, discrete principles and skills that are part of the rehabilitation paradigm must be disseminated to staff working in real-world settings. Staff training strategies that help the rehabilitation team develop effective programs are especially important. This paper reviews Interactive Staff Training (IST), an approach to team building and program development that combines educational and organizational strategies. IST comprises four stages--introduction to the system, program development, program implementation, and program maintenance--with each stage defined by behavioral tasks that engage the team and corresponding products that serve as markers of progress. Testing treatment dissemination strategies poses interesting problems for the researcher, some which are reviewed here. Outcome studies completed on IST are summarized in light of these problems. The paper ends with a consideration of some future directions for research in this area.