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Accuracy of clinicians' expectancies for psychiatric rehospitalization
Author(s) -
Stack Lois C.,
Lan Peter B.,
Miley Alan D.
Publication year - 1983
Publication title -
american journal of community psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.113
H-Index - 112
eISSN - 1573-2770
pISSN - 0091-0562
DOI - 10.1007/bf00898421
Subject(s) - citation , mental health , library science , state (computer science) , center (category theory) , health psychology , psychology , sociology , psychiatry , public health , medicine , computer science , nursing , chemistry , algorithm , crystallography
Rehospitalizations of 269 patients in a state community mental health center were compared to therapists' expectations at discharge for each patient's readmission within the next 2 years. Analysis of the residual variance (predicted minus observed rehospitalization) indicated that clinicians' prognostic judgments were biased in regard to patients' ethnicity: black patients were considered more likely to be rehospitalized than whites, although the opposite occurred. No evidence of gender-related bias was found. Clinicians' expectancies were influenced unduly by their perceptions of patients' severity of illness and cooperativeness. They apparently ignored the prognostic values of favorable factors such as lack of prior hospitalizations, youthfulness, lack of severe impairment, and living in a middle-class or residentially stable neighborhood. Therapists expected rehospitalization for two-thirds of their patients, but less than half actually returned. Predictors of rehospitalization were prior hospitalizations, age, and instability of the postdischarge neighborhood.