Chronic mentally ill individuals reentering the community after hospitalization. Phase II: The urban experience.
The purpose of this qualitative study was to explore the experiences of persons reentering an urban community after hospitalization for mental illness. The sample consisted of five men and three women, aged early 30's to mid-50's, mostly diagnozed with schizophrenia, and who had had several hospitalizations within the previous year. Most returned to places where they had lived before, frequently to boarding homes for former psychiatric patients. Most lived alone. Each participant was interviewed shortly before discharge and one to two times in the community. The tape-recorded interviews were analyzed according to the Giorgi method. Three themes emerged from the data, related, respectively, to the hospital and its environs remaining a focus of the participants' lives, the added burden of social and financial conditions, and the presence of goals which nevertheless had barriers to their achievement. Contrasts are drawn with the findings of Phase I (Montgomery & Johnson 1998), in which there was found a much stronger sense of discharge marking a new beginning. The findings add to our knowledge about what it is like for chronic mentally ill individuals to live outside hospital, but also raise questions about the influence of particular diagnoses, community characteristics and changes in adjustment over time.
Johnson
B
B
Faculty of Nursing, University of Toronto, Canada.
Montgomery
P
P
D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000328:Adult; D001294:Attitude to Health; D002908:Chronic Disease; D003688:Deinstitutionalization; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015404:Nursing Methodology Research; D010351:Patient Discharge; D011568:Psychiatric Nursing; D012559:Schizophrenia / Q000451:nursing / Q000534:rehabilitation*; D012565:Schizophrenic Psychology; D012944:Social Support; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D014504:Urban Health