Date of Award

1-1-2010

Document Type

Campus Access Thesis

Department

Psychology

Sub-Department

Clinical-Community Psychology

First Advisor

Bret Kloos

Abstract

Community integration is increasingly being recognized as important for wellbeing among persons with psychiatric illnesses. However, the goal of community integration as set forth by mental health policies remains largely unrealized. Social isolation continues to be a significant problem for persons with serious mental illnesses (SMI), particularly in supported housing environments. Community integration has been conceptualized as comprising of three dimensions: physical integration, social integration and psychological integration. Drawing from the capabilities approach for integration as proposed by Ware and colleagues (2007), the current study examined how two specific person-environment relationships predict community integration among 418 adult persons with SMI residing in supported housing. More specifically, the study examined whether coping mediates the relationship between two aspects of the housing environment (i.e., community tolerance and neighborhood quality) and three dimensions of community integration (i.e., physical, social, and psychological integration). Analyses revealed that (1) coping significantly mediated the relationship between community tolerance and psychological integration, and that (2) coping significantly mediated the relationship between neighborhood quality and both social integration and psychological integration. The findings suggest that interventions for promoting community integration among SMI persons should target both environmental and individual-level factors.

Rights

© 2010, Victoria Ho Chien

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