Friday, 14 January 2005 - 2:00 PM

This presentation is part of: Working with Families of Persons with Severe Mental Illness

Attitudes and Perceived Barriers to Working with Families of Persons with Severe Mental Illness: Mental Health Professionals’ Perspectives

Purpose: Over the last several decades, research has documented the extent of family burden for persons with severe mental illness (SMI) and their need for services, and recommended providing services to families (e.g., family psychoeducation) as a part of best practices. However, research has suggested that families continue to express a great degree of dissatisfaction with the amount and quality of services they received as well as interactions with mental health professionals. The purposes of this study are to examine mental health professionals' views of the degree to which mental health programs provide services to these families and meet their needs, and to identify barriers to developing such services.

Method: A state-wide needs assessment was conducted with mental health professionals (N=320) serving people with SMI at Community Mental Health Centers in Indiana, using a self-administered mail survey. The survey was developed based on previous research and included questions about background information, current level of services provided to families, attitudes, perceived barriers to working with families, and training needs.

Results: Over 60% of mental health professionals (N=180) reported that they had not provided much services to families in the last 6 months and that they held negative attitudes toward families (e.g., family has often unrealistic expectation for client’s improvement, family members often have their own mental health problems). The overall level of services provided was positively related to mental health professionals’ beliefs about the usefulness of family interventions and their competency as well as their positive attitudes toward families such as understanding stigma and other negative impacts of mental illness on families (r=0.25 to 0.39, p=0.013 to p=0.00). Cross-disciplinary comparisons revealed mixed findings about the attitudes and amount of services provided, with social workers providing more emotional support, crisis intervention and family therapy. More than half of respondents (N=185) identified variables related to family or client (e.g., family’s lack of interest, client’s refusal to involve families) and their heavy workload as major barriers. They did not view lack of support and guidance from the agency nor their competency as significant barriers. Only 37% (N=115) reported that they had ever received training about working with families.

Implications: Findings suggest that more training would benefit mental health professionals and should focus on reducing their overall negative attitudes and improving their understanding of families' needs as well as their skills and knowledge about developing collaborative relationships with families.

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