Educational Outcomes Of Psychiatric Inpatients In A State Hospital Adult Literacy Program

Abstract

Hospitalized individuals with psychiatric problems often exhibit poor educational skills. The present study examined educational outcomes of psychiatric inpatients in response to literacy instruction. The Woodcock-Johnson Psycho-Educational Battery-Revised (Woodcock& Johnson, 1989, 1990)measured participants' reading and mathematics performance before and one year after the enrollment in the Adult Literacy Program at Hawai'i State Hospital. In addition, the effects of individual characteristics such as developmental status and ESL were explained. Multivariate analyses demonstrated positive outcomes of participants in mathematics(p = .004) and vocabulary (p = .001) and an effect of developmental status on the vocabulary outcomes(p = .018) with the ESL status entered into the analysis as a control variable, suggesting that the psychiatric inpatients with developmental disability improved vocabulary skills.