ENTERPRISE-BASED SHELTERED WORKSHOPS IN NANJING - A NEW MODEL FOR THECOMMUNITY REHABILITATION OF MENTALLY-ILL WORKERS

This paper describes the development of community mental health servic es in Nanjing and reports on a retrospective study that compared the t wo-year outcome for 78 schizophrenic patients who attended four enterp rise-based sheltered workshops (experimental group) with that of 78 sc hizophrenic patients who attended an out-patient clinic (control group ). Despite having a longer course of illness and more prior hospital a dmissions than patients in the control group, at the end of the two ye ars patients treated in enterprise-based sheltered workshops had signi ficantly less psychosocial dysfunction (mean Social Dysfunction Screen ing Schedule score 3.4(s.d. 0.2) v. 7.4 (s.d. 0.7), t=49.2, d.f. 154, P<0.001) and less severe psychiatric symptomatology (mean Brief Psychi atric Rating Scale score 33.1 (s.d. 2.7) v. 54.1 (s.d. 2.9), t= 47.0, d.f. 154, P< 0.001). Moreover, compared with the control group, over t he two year period a smaller proportion of the experimental group expe rienced a clinical relapse (14.1% v. 38.5%, X(2)=5.10, d.f. 1; P<0.05) or hospital readmission (7.7% v. 21.8%, x(2) = 10.7, d.f. 1, P< 0.01) . We conclude that the organisation of on-site sheltered workshops for mentally ill factory workers is an effective model for promoting comm unity mental health that merits widespread application in China.