Training teams to deliver better psychiatric rehabilitation programs.

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Introduction by the column editors: Most rehabilitation programs for persons with severe mental illness are provided by interdisciplinary teams whose members include professionals, paraprofessionals, and, sometimes, “prosumers”— individuals who both provide and consume mental health services. Despite the ubiquity with which psychiatric rehabilitation techniques such as social skills training, vocational rehabilitation, and family psychoeducation are used within a team approach, with few exceptions practitioners are taught these techniques without reference to how they may fit in with a team that delivers the mental health services. One exception is the approach of the Program for Assertive Community Treatment (PACT), which emphasizes adequate preparation of practitioners for working together as a team. Staff members who work on PACT teams have clearly specified roles and frequent face-to-face meetings and use methods of group problem solving that have been operationalized for day-to-day practice. Without recognition of the importance of the team context in which rehabilitation modalities are delivered, rehabilitation practitioners may compromise clinical goals and lose a valuable source of social support and encouragement—namely, positive feedback and reciprocal reinforcement from their teammates. In this month’s Rehab Rounds column, Patrick W. Corrigan, Psy.D., and Stanley G. McCracken, Ph.D., describe their method of combining educational and organizational strategies for teaching teams to deliver better psychiatric rehabilitation programs. They show how combinations of strategies offer the greatest promise for assisting rehabilitation teams in developing programs that meet clients’ needs effectively.