The New York State Community Support System: A Profile of Clients

In 1979 the New York State Office of Mental Health contracted with the authors and their colleagues for an independent evaluation of its community support services (CSS) program for the chronically mentally ill in the four upstate mental health regions. As a first step in their program evaluation, the authors present initial findings from a 1981 survey of 844 clients sampled from seven selected CSS program sites. The demographic characteristics, clinical characteristics, and levels of functioning of the CSS client sample are discussed and compared with similar data collected by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in a 1980 survey of chronically disabled adults in its national community support program (CSP). The authors also present a profile of the services received by the CSS clients and, whenever possible, they compare these services with those received by the NIMH CSP clients.