ABSTRACT
The preceding chapter described the increased availability during the last 20 years of psychiatric vocational rehabilitation programs for patients living in the community. Also during this period, attention has increasingly been focused on employment as a measure of the effectiveness of psychiatric treatment and as an element of psychiatric diagnosis (Strauss & Carpenter, 1972, 1974; Anthony & Jansen, 1984; Anthony & Buell, 1975). However, it would be mistaken to assume, given these developments, that vocational rehabilitation has become well integrated into traditional psychiatric treatment. On the contrary, vocational rehabilitation of the psychiatrically disabled continues to be viewed as an ancillary activity that is primarily performed by staff outside of standard psychological treatment (Harding, Strauss, Hafez, & Lieberman, 1987; Black & Kase, 1986; Anthony & Marguelos, 1974). Consequently, there has been relatively little development of vocational rehabilitation treatment approaches designed specifically for persons with psychological disabilities. Instead, psychiatric vocational rehabilitation programming has primarily been “borrowed,” with only minor adaptations, from procedures employed with the developmentally and physically disabled. Supported employment, initially conceived for use with the developmentally disabled, represents one of the most recent rehabilitation approaches being applied to psychiatric patients.
