Perceived Criticism and Functioning in Schizophrenia

University Of Southern California, Los Angeles CA

Investigators

Abstract

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Contextual influences on mental illness and its care is a top priority for the National Institutes of Mental Health (NIMH) (Workgroup., 2000). Part of the NIMH commitment to translating behavioral science research into practical and applicable information for the improved treatment of the major mental illnesses is to better understand how culture and family affect an individual's coping with a major mental illness. This study proposes to examine the possible contextual influences that African-American relatives have on their ill family member's psychosocial functioning, a section of the general population that has had fewer clinical protocols targeted toward them and have been deemed as a priority focus for research as outlined in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (2001) supplement Mental Health: Culture, Race, and Ethnicity. It is a secondary analysis of a sample that came from a project that was investigating client and family outcomes from a home-based intervention for families with a seriously mentally ill member. It will include extending the initial model, a path analytic model, by including latent variables, based on the most recent literature and based on a plan of course work and advanced training.