There has been increasing interest in recent years in the community care of psychotic patients, either following psychiatric hospitalization or in lieu of such hospitalization. Both drugs and special clinical facilities (e.g., after-care clinics or day-care facilities) have been used in the treatment of such patients. Although clinical opinions have, in general, favored the combination of these methods of treatment, no controlled research had been carried out in this field until about 3 years ago, and, even at present, relatively little controlled research is being done. This may be because clinicians have been reluctant to accept some of the necessary conditions of controlled studies (such as random assignment of patients to predetermined, standard treatments) or because appropriate methods for measuring change in psychiatric symptoms and social adjustment in psychotic or postpsychotic patients have been lacking.
Nevertheless, several well-designed and productive research projects on