To assess the possible impact of deinstitutionalization on the social behaviour of chronic psychiatric patients.

Hall and Baker's REHAB is a comprehensive behaviour rating scale designed to assess social functioning of people with a major psychiatric disorder. REHAB was completed for 58 chronic psychiatric patients (41 men - 17 women, mean age: 57.5±12.5 years) independently by a pair of raters one year before and another pair of raters one year after the patients’ relocation.

Among REHAB's five subscales that assess patients’ general behaviour, “community skills” and “social activity”, showed statistically significant improvement (p< 0.001 for both subscales), “self-care” and “overall impression” showed a mild but not significant change, while “speech disturbance” remained at almost identical levels. Gender was not associated but age correlated negatively with patients’ level of functioning (p=0.009). Regarding REHAB's section that assesses patients’ deviant behaviour, there was a significant decrease in the severity and/or frequency of patients’ self-talking (p=0.021) and a slight non-significant change in patients’ exhibiting physical violence, self-injurious or sexually offensive behaviour; nevertheless it is important to note that 40%-83% of the patients did not present with deviant behaviour to begin with. Gender did not influence results, but physical violence, self-injury and verbal aggression showed moderate negative correlation with age (r=-0.341 to -0.435).

Even though deinstitutionalization does not improve every aspect or psychiatric patients’ social functioning, it reasonably enhances social and community skills and suppresses some of their deviant behaviours.