Rehabilitation of the disabled mentally ill in the community

The purpose of this article is to review the latest developments in the area of rehabilitation of disabled mentally ill patients. Rehabilitation is a comprehensive and multi-disciplinary treatment. It involves a wide variety of interventions. These interventions are designed to enable the client to integrate into the normal life of the community and to improve his quality of life. This review discusses the different approaches and their effectiveness. The approaches that are described include comprehensive psychiatric, psycho-social and psycho-educational interventions including family therapy, training in social skills, and vocational intervention in programs and services in the community. The approaches that have been shown to be the most effective in controlled studies include: follow-up psychiatric drug treatment, individual and family psycho-educational treatment; social skills training; community sheltered-housing facilities and vocational rehabilitation programs. It has been emphasized that the effectiveness of treatment is conditional not only on the client's resilience and a comprehensive and multidisciplinary treatment approach, but also on the community financial resources and the level of training of the professionals.