BACKGROUND: Persons with mental health problems often experience stigmatisation, which can

The earliest studies about stigmatization of persons receiving professional mental health care date from the time when psychiatric hospitals constituted the predominant facilities. The landscape of care has changed enormously since. Current research reveals that stigmatization still exists and has detrimental outcomes, not only for clients of psychiatric hospitals, but also for clients of so-called alternative settings. Studies that explicitly compare stigma experiences between different organizations are very scarce, however. This article compares clients from psychiatric and general hospitals according to three dimensions of stigmatization, using data from structured questionnaires (n = 555). The results reveal that when background characteristics are taken into account clients of psychiatric wards of general hospitals report less stigma expectations and social rejection experiences in comparison with their counterparts in psychiatric hospitals. Concerning self-rejection, no differences are found. These results suggest that more attention should be paid to specific characteristics of mental health services themselves in discussions about stigmatization and destigmatization of mental health care.

Day structuring while providing meaningful activities for persons with chronic mental health problems is a key goal of day activity programs in rehabilitation centers. Nevertheless, research has seldom investigated organizational characteristics promoting the experience of meaningfulness in clients. This study explores these organizational determinants using information gathered from 646 clients of fifty-three rehabilitation centers providing day activity programs in the Flemish region of Belgium. Describing boredom as a feeling of anxiety about the lack of meaningfulness of an activity or a situation, the study relies on multilevel analysis to predict the prevalence of boredom among several features of the rehabilitation settings. The experience of boredom is prone to the presence of routinized activities lacking intrinsic meaning and lacking emphasis on task completion. In larger centers, the emphasis on task completion functions as a mechanism to create meaning. To obtain the same goal in smaller centers, the staff provides clients with nonroutinized, intrinsically rewarding activities.

Exchange theory and homophily theory give rise to counteracting expectations for the interaction between human service organizations. Based on arguments of exchange theory, more interaction is expected between dissimilar organizations having complementary resources. Based on arguments of homophily theory, organizations having similar characteristics are expected to interact more. Interorganizational relations between human service organizations in two regional networks in Flanders are examined in this study. Results indicate that human service organizations tend to cooperate more with similar organizations as several homophily effects but not one effect of dissimilarity were found to be significant. The results of this study contribute to the understanding of interorganizational networks of human service organizations and have implications for the development of integrated care.

In this contribution, a sociological study of networks of human service organizations, using social network analysis, is presented. Data from nine networks of human service organizations involved in the care for children and youngsters in Flanders are analysed. The analyses aim to sketch the prevailing pattern of client referral between types of organizations. It is speculated that the referral of clients between human service organizations is based on the role expectations that derive from the statute of the organization. Using blockmodelling techniques, it is investigated to what degree the relations of referral and the network position of an organization are directed by the statute of the organization. Results indicate that the relations of referral and the position of the organization in the network are – to a large extent – determined by the bylaws of the organization. From the data from nine networks, an average blockmodel is derived that represents the pattern of relationships between types of organizations in the average network of freely accessible youth care in Flanders.