Objectives : This study was to demonstrate sociodemographic and clinical characteristics, and effectiveness of programs by age groups for schizophrenic patients who were attending day rehabilitation programs in community mental health centers.
Methods : The sociodemographic and clinical data including psychiatric history and various rating scales for individual patients attending day rehabilitation programs in 16 mental health centers were gathered from the questionnaire self-reported by patients and interviewed by mental health center workers. Among 301 schizophrenic patients, the data of 289 patients of 20 to 49 years old were analyzed for the study.
Results : The patients in the younger ages tend to be more unmarried, highly educated, covered by medical insurance, to have parents as main care-giver, more family members living with, shorter duration of illness, use atypical antipsychotic drugs, to show lower attendance rate of day programs, higher BPRS and low GAF scores compared to the patients in the older ages. The older patients are likely to be more married and less educated, in medicaid, to have more conventional antipsychotic drugs, relatively lower lower BPRS scores and higher GAF scores.
Conclusion : This study suggests that the day rehabilitation programs in mental health centers have positive effects on psychosocial rehabilitation of schizophrenic patients across all the age groups. However, many characteristics of schizophrenic patients in mental health centers were different across their age groups, suggesting that there should be age-specific considerations for the programs in the mental health centers. (J Korean Neuropsychiatr Assoc 2004;43 (0:105-112)
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