Social Relations and Community Tenure in Schizophrenia

THIS IS one of a series of papers that will describe an exhaustive follow-up of 214 schizophrenic men. The study was a joint effort by the New York State Mental Health Research Unit and the Division of Preventive Psychiatry, University of Rochester Department of Psychiatry. A major objective of the study was to assess the social correlates of successful performance and community tenure. Our long-range goal was to develop a model of mental illness that focused on the adequacy of performance of certain familial, occupational, and societal roles by the patient.

With an increasing reliance on psychotropic drugs and community mental health centers, the locus of the problem of care and treatment of the mentally ill has shifted from the hospital to the community, increasing the visibility of mental illness as a community social problem. The increasing number of mentally ill who are resident in the community underscores the need