The relationship between patient demographic characteristics and psychiatric rehabilitation outcome.

Professionals engaged in psychiatric rehabilitation need to know what specific factors contribute to the success or failure of attempts to reintegrate the psychiatric patient back into the community. A review of the research literature succeeded in identifying various demographic charcteristics of expsychiatric patients that are related to recidivism and posthospital employment. A composite picture of patients who are more likely to be recidivists or unemployed (or both) was advanced. The factors that appear to be related to posthospital employment are not consistently the same factors that are related to recidivism.