Current approaches to assessment and treatment of persons with serious mental illness

Psychologists increasingly have the opportunity to work with persons with serious and chronic mental illnesses. Managed care encourages services that rely less on hospital treatment and more on a combination of brief and intensive outpatient therapy and long-term, low-cost maintenance and support. Diagnostic practices needed to be effective in such an environment include categorical and functional assessment. Psychological treatments that have been demonstrated effective include cognitive-behavioral social skills training, pragmatic supportive therapy, personal therapy, the multimodal functional model, therapeutic contracting, case management, and multiple family therapy. These innovative assessment and treatment techniques are described along with some experimental treatments of cognitive dysfunction.