There is now wide agreement that people with severe mental illness can be adequately treated and cared for in the community, provided back-up hospital care is available when needed. Another important development has been the recognition that clinical treatment and care is insufficient for recovery and restoration of role functioning following illness onset, and must be supplemented by evidence-based practices in psychiatric rehabilitation. This article describes how allied health professionals can lead recovery oriented approaches that incorporate evidence-based forms of psychiatric rehabilitation. Family psychoeducation and supported employment are provided as examples of such evidence-based practices that require wider implementation.

This study examined the post-injury rehabilitation needs of 158 adult siblings of persons with traumatic brain injury (TBI) in the United States. The mean age of participants was 37.0 years (SD = 10.0 years), and their ages ranged from 19 to 72 years. A total of 120 (75.9%) of the participants were female. Participants completed the Family Needs Questionnaire (FNQ) (Kreutzer, 1988), which measures the unique needs of families following TBI. The FNQ counts the types of needs rated as important and the frequency in which those needs have been met. Data were analysed via hierarchical multiple regression analysis with the number of met needs set as the outcome variable. A total of 15 predictor variables assessed direct and indirect markers of caregiving related stresses corresponding to position in the Pearlin stress process model. Participants indicated that health information was the most important need while needs for involvement with care were the most often met. Results also indicated that participant feelings of more restrictions in valued family activities and perceptions of greater cognitive-behavioural impairments with their injured siblings were associated with lower number of met rehabilitation needs. Participants reported that the use of effective coping behaviours and access to social support were associated with higher numbers of met rehabilitation needs. Findings suggest adult siblings share similar needs to parents and spouses (i.e., the most common primary caregivers) and require professional attention and support following TBI.

The objective of the study was to validate the factorial structure of the short form of the Sense of Coherence Scale (SOC-13) with a sample of substance abuse clients to facilitate health promotion research with this population in the future. Participants were 406 clients recruited from seven residential therapeutic community programs for the treatment of substance abuse. Four confirmatory factor models were tested: (1) a three-factor correlated model; (2) a two-factor correlated model; (3) a 13-item one-factor model; and (4) a 9-item one-factor model. The results indicated that the data did not fit the three-factor correlated model and the two-factor correlated model, whereas empirical data fits the 13-item one-factor and the 9-item one-factor models reasonably well, with the latter representing a significantly better fit than the former one. These results are consistent with previous studies and reflected a unidimensional factor in the sense of coherence, as opposed to the two or three-factor structure. The SOC-9 has considerable promise as a brief measure of SOC in substance abuse assessment and treatment settings.

The purposes of this review article are to gather existing evidence on the contributing factors in affecting the psychosocial adjustment among people with chronic pain, and to promote a comprehensive conceptual framework in this topic by adapting Wallander and colleagues' (1989) Risk and Resistance Model of Adjustment. Our intention is to promote future empirical research that will validate this working conceptual framework and will provide and clinical guidelines for rehabilitation professionals who work with people with chronic pain.