ABSTRACT
In an earlier empirical study, it was experimentally established that problem-solving patient-led groups could maintain their individual members and solve their daily problems in a hospital setting (Fairweather, 1964). This study also indicated that if a new way of living in the community—with greater social participation for chronically hospitalized mental patients—were designed, it would have to have certain special features. Some of these were discovered to be: vertical mobility up and down through whatever differentiated social structure was developed; open access to the social situation in terms of both entrance and exit; meaningful tasks, the accomplishment of which would reward the participants for the effort expended; and a special communication system which could both overcome status barriers between professionals and clients and provide adviser feedback that would continuously influence the solutions to daily living problems which the participants attempted. One way of establishing more participative social statuses for such patients, it was decided,would be to create a new community social subsystem with these characteristics as an alternative to the mental hospital.
