Depressive symptoms and mentally ill chemical abusers' perception of the treatment environment in residential settings.

In assessing the socioenvironmental characteristics of psychiatric treatment programs, researchers typically assume that their measurements are unaffected by client characteristics. However, our analysis among mentally ill chemical abusers in a therapeutic community and community residences found significant associations between subscales of the Community Oriented Program Evaluation Scale (COPES) and depressive symptoms, as measured by the CES-D, after 2, 6, and 12 months of treatment. Investigators of treatment environments should consider depressive symptoms as a possible threat to the validity of their findings.