Julia Caldwell

Publication Date

12-1992

Advisor(s) - Committee Chair

Sally Kuhlenschmidt, John Bruni, John O’Connor

Comments

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Abstract

The majority of research on chronically mentally ill consumers’ knowledge of their psychotropic medications has been conducted with inpatient rather than outpatient consumers. This study was conducted to determine whether outpatient consumers who had been involved in a pre-existing medication education group (N=12) would be more knowledgeable about their medications than those who had not participated (N=30). A second purpose of this study was to determine how much insight caseworkers have into consumers’ understanding of consumer psychotropic medications.

Results indicate that consumers in both groups were, for the most part, knowledgeable about their medications. However, the education group consumers revealed they would feel more comfortable going to a caseworker if a particular problem arose about their medication. Consumers in both groups underestimated the harmfulness of their medications as compared to pharmacist ratings. Caseworkers felt consumers would underestimate the importance of knowing about their medications when consumers were actually accurate in their ratings of importance. Furthermore, caseworkers felt consumers would not choose to take their medications but consumers said they would. The majority of caseworkers were also not certain if consumers had been instructed about their medications when most consumers said they had been.

The formal education the treatment group received may have been too weak to produce any difference between the education and non-education groups. Furthermore, the “non-treatment” group may have been educated informally. Further research is suggested using random assignment of subjects.

Disciplines

Applied Behavior Analysis | Business | Mental and Social Health | Psychology | Social and Behavioral Sciences

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