The Effects of a Community Psychiatric Nursing Program on the Rehabilitation of Home-based Long-term Psychiatric Patients

In the last few years, psychiatric nurse practitioners have shown a growing an interest in community psychosocial rehabilitation, caring for chronic psychiatric patients as case manager in South Korea. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of a community psychiatric rehabilitation nursing program on self-care activity and quality of life and to suggest this program as an effective nursing intervention in a group of chronic home-based psychiatric patients in a poor town. A nonequivalent control group, pretest-posttest design was used. Of the twenty women that started the program, sixteen finished it. The data were analyzed by the Wilcoxon Rank Sum Test. The program included the process of case management which consisted of four phases: the first was an active case finding and pre-test, the second was home visiting and contacted by phone. the third was group activity therapy of 12 sessions, and the fourth phase was terminal and post-test. The effects of the program were assessed by quality of life and self-care activity. The quality of life and the self-care activity, especially, area of nutrition. elimination, dressing. leisure activity, and follow-up clinic visiting showed greater improvement than those of the control group. The results of this study suggest that this program was effective in improving the quality of life of chronic home-based psychiatric patients.