A STUDY OF PATIENTS' PERCEPTIONS OF THE PSYCHOTHERAPEUTIC RELATIONSHIPS WITH THE TREATMENT STAFF AT AN ACUTE-CARE COMMUNITY PSYCHIATRIC FACILITY (BARRETT-LENNARD INVENTORY)
Abstract
The purpose of this study is to determine whether there is any significant relationship between 100 acute-care psychiatric inpatients' perceptions of their therapeutic relationships with the hospital treatment staff and various outcome measures. The primary research questions address the issues of whether there is any correlation between the patients' perceptions of the therapeutic relationship and the rate at which their psychiatric problems are resolved and their total length of stay as inpatients. The secondary research questions assess whether there is any significant relationship between the patients' perceptions of the therapeutic relationship with the treatment staff and various descriptive variables. The patients' response scores were divided into two groups. One group had relatively high response scores and other relatively low response scores. The Barrett - Lennard Relationship Inventory was used to measure the therapeutic relationships as perceived by the patients. A correlational statistic was determined for the two primary research questions and a Student's t-test statistic was calculated to determine differences in means between the high and low groups with regard to the means for ages, percent of problems resolved, and length of stay. A Chi-Square analysis was done between the two groups with respect to race, sex, diagnosis, marital and employment status, education, therapies experienced, and in terms of need for suicide observation, physical restraint, or locked seclusion. The correlation statistics comparing the total relationship inventory scores with the percent of patient problems resolved at the time the inventory was administered and total length of stay were not found to be significant (r = 0.072, p = 0.240; and r = 0.012, p = 0.454 respectively). There were no significant findings with regard to any of the Student's t-test analyses. In addition, there were no significant findings for any of the other descriptive variables. It may therefore be concluded that the findings of this study suggest that regardless of patient perceptions of the therapeutic relationships with the hospital treatment staff there are no significant differences indicated in terms of the outcome variables examined.
This paper has been withdrawn.