Nurses in long-term care facilities indicated that about 30 percent of residents presented noise-making behavior. From descriptions, typology of noise-making was identified: purposeless and perseverative noise-making, noise-making in response to environment, noise-making to elicit response from environment, "chatterbox" noise-making,…

Presents Project Adapt, a psychogeriatric rehabilitation service developed to integrate assessment, behavior and medication management, and outcome evaluation to meet needs of mentally ill in nursing homes. Notes that mental health staff perceived significantly more improvement among participating nursing home residents than among those not…

Studied 79 nursing home residents who were expected to return to community. Only 16 percent of subjects did not return to community: two chose to remain in nursing home, four had no willing family caregivers, and two quickly deteriorated. Results did not support notion of iatrogenesis. (Author/NB)

The effect of level of stereotypy on learning a discrimination was examined using a factorial design with high and low levels of stereotypy and three levels of IQ with 30 institutionalized retarded persons. Results indicated the effects of stereotypy were different across the IQ levels. (Author/DB)

The study compared two approaches to increasing engagement in a leisure activities program with six institutionalized retarded adult males. The "activities manager" approach was more effective in increasing levels of engagement than the "prompting independent use of activities" approach. There was little change, however, in resident vocalization,…

Examined resident characteristics most conducive to sociability and the common bonds underlying nursing home friendships. Suggests that lucidity and sight explain a significant proportion of the "loner" status of some residents, while placement on the same unit and contemporaneous age proved to be the most common bonds underlying…

California's data on 59,000 mentally retarded/developmentally delayed persons were examined. Despite claims of excess institutional population and the availability of residential alternatives, 52.5% of all persons resided in their natural homes: small family care units held 14.2% of the population and institutions, 12.8%. (Author/CL)

Child care workers in an institution for severely/profoundly retarded children were trained to use prompts and increased toy availability. On the average purposeful activity level of the children increased from 10 percent to a mean of 70 percent during treatment while stereotyped or harmful behaviors decreased from an average of 20 percent to 70…

Court rulings and legislation are cited in a discussion of institutionalized mentally retarded persons' rights to privacy. The authors emphasize the need to restructure job responsibilities and/or descriptions to ensure appropriate resident-staff relations for dressing, bathing, toileting, and other private activities. (CL)

Comparison of developmental growth for 104 matched pairs from mentally retarded residents of a public institution and of community living arrangements (CLA) revealed that CLA Ss showed significant developmental progress in reduction of maladaptive behavior while institutionalized Ss showed no change over 2 years. (Author/CL)

Institutionalized retarded children were reinforced for imitating the same model or three different models. A posttest to assess levels of imitation was then conducted by a new model. Pretest-posttest comparisons indicated that imitation with new models was greater for children trained with multiple as opposed to single models. (Author)

Unitization--placement of institutionalized mentally retarded persons from a common geographical area into a series of living arrangements in the same residential area--is discussed in terms of its implications and meaning for the social worker and the resident. (Author/IM)

Examined illness complaint rates in relation to degree of crowding in a federal prison and a county jail. The results suggest that crowding in prisons may induce psychological stress which can be reflected in an increased level of illness complaints. (BT)

This issue of "P/PV In Brief" reviews interim outcomes from the Ready4Work prisoner reentry initiative. Funded by the US Department of Labor and the Annie E. Casey and Ford foundations, Ready4Work is a three-year national demonstration project designed to address the needs of the growing ex-prisoner population and to test the capacity of…

The authors, using a new instrument, attempted to reassess the relationship between psychopathology and interpersonal distance. Schizophrenics were more external than nonschizophrenics, who were more external than normals. Preferred distance from interpersonal stimuli as measured by the Comfortable Interpersonal Distance scale was greatest for…