Providing behavioral data to physicians for enhancing medication treatment for chronically mentally disabled individuals

• Main Author: Patterson, Nona L.
• Format: Others
• Published: Scholarly Commons 1987
• Subjects: Mentally ill Care; Schizophrenia Chemotherapy; Drugs Prescribing; Symptoms; Medicine and Health Sciences
• Online Access: https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/uop_etds/2140; https://scholarlycommons.pacific.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3139&context=uop_etds

Physicians are often unaware of mentally disabled outpatients' symptomatic behaviors that are relevant to their medication prescriptions. Such information is available to the clients' residential care providers . The present study trained clients' residential care providers in data collection and provided these data to physicians. It was predicted that these data would improve medication treatment for these clients and consequently lead to a decrease in client's symptomatic behaviors . The results did not confirm the predictions; the data provided to physicians on clients' between- visit behaviors had no measured effect on the physicians' treatment of these clients, although the physicians reported positive attitudes about the helpfulness and utility of ·the system .