This chapter highlights the Community Connections Project, a program of innovative services for the seriously mentally ill elderly, funded as a three-year demonstration project by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Since its inception in 1988, the project has served'over 160 acutely or persistently mentally ill older adults each year. The project site, Senior Health and Peer Counseling in Sant...

OBJECTIVE This study examined the helpfulness of coping strategies and the relative importance of mental health services in coping with schizophrenia from the perspective of siblings. METHODS This article presents selected survey data from a national study of 746 respondents that investigated the impact of schizophrenia on siblings' lives. The authors developed the Friedrich-Lively Instrument...

With health care reform underway, the results of the study by Sharma et al emphasize the foundational role of primary care in our multimorbiditybased chronic care system. They found that the majority of patients with 14 high-cost chronic conditions saw general rather than specialist physicians. They suggest that the level of dependence that this chronically ill population has on primary care ma...

Family caregiving is an area that has received extensive attention in the professional and public domains. The graying ofAmerica, the looming aging and retirement of the baby-boomers, increased pressures to care for the chronically ill in their homes, and changes in health care service reimbursement systems all contribute to the generalized concerns regarding caregiving. Nursing constitutes the...

OBJECTIVE The clergy in sub-Saharan Africa play a major role in the care and pathways to orthodox mental health services of the mentally ill. Their attitudes concerning mental illnesses would influence community mental health intervention efforts. This study aimed to determine the attitudes of clergy towards persons with mental illness. METHOD A cross-sectional survey of clergy (n = 107) of t...

Mental ill health is common. However, whilst the risk of developing any disorder is high, the type and severity of disorder varies. Most mental health is mild and self-limiting, a significant proportion is chronic and causes moderate disability and a small proportion of people suffer life-long, severely disabling illness. Whatever the type and severity, the majority of mental ill health seen by...

OBJECTIVE To compare the impact of group outpatient visits to traditional "physician-patient dyad" care among older chronically ill HMO members on health services utilization and cost, self-reported health status, and patient and physician satisfaction. DESIGN A 1-year randomized trial. SETTING A group model HMO in the Denver Metropolitan area. PARTICIPANTS Three hundred twenty-one member...

OBJECTIVES Currently there is a lack of information regarding the health-related quality of life (HRQoL) of healthy as well as chronically ill children on a European level. In 2 European projects questionnaires for the assessment of the HRQoL in children and adolescents have been developed: The KIDSCREEN project aims at a co-operative European development of a standardised screening instrument ...

Increasing academic and governmental attention is being directed towards improving legislative and human rights protections for the mentally ill and the mentally vulnerable in developing nations. Many states have made sincere attempts to discern such protections and enunciate them in legislation. A significant gap continues to exist here, however, between aspiration and implementation. One stra...

BACKGROUND Mental ill health is common among doctors. Fast, efficient diagnosis and treatment are needed as mentally ill doctors pose a safety risk to the public, yet they are often reluctant to seek help. AIMS To review literature regarding risk factors and potential barriers to help-seeking unique to doctors; to consider the success of interventions by specialist services for doctors. MET...