Behavioral Consultation with Difficult to Treat Psychiatric Patients

Abstract

Behavioral procedures have proven efficacious in the ward-wide treatment of psychiatric inpatients. These procedures are often recommended and administrated by behaviorally oriented staff who work as consultants. While numerous published reports show that behavioral consultation is effective for changing patients' targeted behavior, few data show whether it affects recidivism and other general indicators of patients' functioning. The present report describes group and case study data for 7 patients regarding the effects of behavioral consultation on frequency and duration of hospital admissions, distress upon readmission, proportion of time spent at regressive versus autonomous privilege levels, and other molar indices of patients' functioning.