Attitudes of parents/guardians of mentally retarded former state hospital residents toward current community placement.

Parents/guardians of former state hospital mentally retarded residents were surveyed through a mailed questionnaire to determine their satisfaction with their child's/ward's current residential placement. The vast majority of parents (90.5%) indicated that they were satisfied with their child's community placement and, in fact, preferred it to that of a state hospital placement. This finding, taken with the results of two previous studies (in which investigators found that parents of currently institutionalized mentally retarded persons wanted their child to remain in a state hospital), suggests that parents prefer that their child remain in his or her current placement, whether in the community or a state hospital.