Factors Affecting Adjustment to Community Living

The authors draw on sociological writings to develop a theoretical model of adjustment to community living in terms of personal attributes, and test the model with data descriptive of a representative sample of 1,471 chronically mentally ill adults participating in the National Institute of Mental Health community support program. According to the model, poor community adjustment results from deficits in basic living skills, from behaviors and traits that offend others, and from somatic problems that restrict independent activity. The model is used in the prediction of four distinct facets of community adjustment: clients' work status, social activity, and need for hospitalization and for crisis assistance. In addition, the model is also used to explain work performance of a subsample of 371 clients who had jobs at the time of the study. While in most instances only a modest amount of the variance is explained, the results provide some empirical support for the theoretical model, and suggest that different components of the model are predictive of varying facets of community adjustment.