Community care

What is community care?

Community care refers to community-based interventions that involve medication, psychosocial treatments, monitoring of clinical progress, and housing and supportive services. These programs encourage patients to establish meaningful relationships, occupations and activities, while also establishing routines at home. Community treatment may also involve involuntary outpatient commitment (compulsory community treatment) to ensure patients receive their necessary treatment.

What is the evidence for community care for people with schizophrenia?

Moderate to low quality evidence suggests community care provides some benefit for medication adherence. There were no differences between compulsory and voluntary community care in the number of hospital readmissions, the number of hospital bed days, satisfaction with care, or overall functioning.

After 18 months of community-based psychoeducation or case management in low to middle income countries, there were improvements in symptoms, functioning, and fewer hospital readmissions. Barriers to feasibility of community care in low and middle income countries include; low education, unavailability of caregivers, resource constraints, and logistical issues. Barriers to acceptability include; fear of stigma and lack of appreciation of intervention benefits. Facilitators of acceptability include; satisfaction with, and appropriateness of, interventions, participation rates, and health worker characteristics (knowledge, trustworthiness, fluency in local dialects, listening skills).

September 2020

Last updated at: 3:01 am, 11th September 2020
To view documentation related to this topic download the files below
Fact Sheet Technical Commentary
Tags:  Outpatient care

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