The effectiveness of college students as therapeutic agents with chronic hospitalized patients.

Abstract

This paper assesses the therapeutic effectiveness of college students working with chronic, hospitalized mental patients. Significant improvement in be havior was found for the patients in the experimental group on the Paranoid Projection, Anxious Intropunitiveness, and Conceptual Disorganization sub scales of the Inpatient Multidimensional Psychiatric Scale. Male patients showed more improvement than did females working with the female college students in the program.

Effectiveness of college students in an incentive community program for chronic hospitalized patients

“…Previous research showing the effectiveness of student programs used indirect measures of behavior such as psychological tests (Holtzberg, et al, 1966;Poser, 1966), or interviews (Bergman & Doland, 1974), whereas the present study used more direct measures of behavior and showed statistically significant differences between experimental and control patients.…”

“…The. questionnaire included 9-point rating scales and various open-ended questions and was identical to a questionnaire used in a previous study (Bergman & Doland, 1974). Using the Kolmogorov Smirnov one-sample test (Siegel, 1956), results from the first question indicated that students viewed changes in patient behavior since the beginning of the program (Jr = 6.18, D(43) = 0.33, p<.01).…”

“…Since patient behavior in the case-aide program (Bergman & Doland, 1974) was measured in an interview situation by two students and patient behavior in the incentive community program was measured on the wards by ward staff, the behavioral changes of the patients due to the programs could not be directly compared. However, the follow-up measures of patient whereabouts were similar for both programs and were therefore compared.…”

“…The presently described "incentive community program" was compared with a case-aide program (Bergman & Doland, 1974) to see if one program was more effective than the other. The case-aide program involved students working with patients on a one-to-one basis.…”

“…Significant decreases on the Depression scale of the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) for experimental patients was reported by Holzberg, Knapp, and Turner (1966). Bergman and Doland (1974) reported significant positive changes on three subscales of the Inpatient Multidimensional Psychiatric Scale for patients seen by college students with little change observed in a control greup.…”