Abstract
D.Cur. (Psychiatric Nursing)
A significant number of chronic patients are discharged from chronic care in psychiatric institutions each year as part of the deinstitutionalisation process. These patients are commonly discharged back to their families or, where families are not available, placed with non-governmental organisations (NGOs) which offer a cost effective alternative to chronic care institutions. It has been observed, since the promulgation of the Mental Health Care Amendment Act (No. 12 of 2014) that the patients placed with NGOs providing residential care services seldom relapse and get readmitted back into psychiatric hospitals for acute or chronic care. In contrast, the relapse and readmission rate of the patients that have been reintegrated back with their families has been observed to be high. At present, there are no explicit explanations as to what facilitates the reintegration of the patients who have been placed with NGOs following their discharge from long-term institutional care. There is an assumption that the NGO environment is expected to be a therapeutic environment that promotes psychosocial rehabilitation and recovery and therefore prevent the patients from relapsing and being rehospitalised.
The purpose of this study was to explore and describe the reintegration of psychiatric patients back into community from long term care in a mental health non-governmental organisation with an aim to develop strategies to facilitate reintegration.
The study took place in three phases. In phase one a situational analysis of the NGO environment was done. The population for the research was a mental health NGO situated in the East of Johannesburg. Purposeful sampling was utilised for the selection of participants that consisted of health care workers and the patients in a NGO. Data collection utilised in-depth individual and focus group interviews employing an Appreciative Inquiry interview technique and reflective field notes were taken during and after each interview. Document analysis was done on the patients’ clinical records. Data analysis was conducted by means of open coding as described by Creswell (2013: 86).
The following themes were identified from health care workers’ data:..