The Effect of Reading Interventions among Poor Readers at a Forensic Psychiatric Clinic

The aim of the present study was to investigate the effect of a short period, 15 sessions, of reading interventions in a sample of adult forensic psychiatric patients: 61 patients with decoding difficulties - 44 in the experimental group and 17 in the comparison group - with an average age of 31.6 participated. Of these, 36% were female, and 29% had an immigrant background. The participants carried out a battery of reading tests. The results in the experimental group showed a medium effect size (d = .36 to .76) on all reading tests between pre- and post-test. The comparison group, however, showed no gain at all between the test occasions. The results indicate that a proportionally low reading intervention effort produces improvement in reading. This study discusses the importance of including reading assessment and offering remediation in order to reach optimal future social adjustment for patients in forensic clinics.