Date of Award

1-1-2010

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Organizational Unit

Graduate School of Social Work

First Advisor

Enid O. Cox, Ph.D.

Second Advisor

Kathy Green

Third Advisor

Jeffrey Jenson

Fourth Advisor

Edith King

Fifth Advisor

Kathleen Ohman

Keywords

Mental illness, Social capital

Abstract

The main purpose of this study is to explore the association between social capital and recovery from mental illness in community-based rehabilitation services within the Taiwanese social and cultural context. This study employed a cross-sectional survey design using a convenience sample of 310 mental health consumers who were members in community mental health agencies (the rehabilitation centers or the half-way houses) in Taiwan and 26 practitioners who were familiar with these participated consumers. A series of hierarchical multiple-regression models were used to identify whether access to social capital has an independent effect on the perceptions of recovery. As expected, access to social capital dimensions, especially mobilization of personal social network, had independent effects on subjective recovery but not on objective recovery. Moreover, access to social capital was a partial mediator of the relationship between social functioning and subjective recovery. Next, the levels of access to social capital among consumers in the half-way houses were not different from those in the community rehabilitation centers. In general, consumers in the community rehabilitation center had higher immediate family support levels than those in the half-way house. However, consumers in the half-way house had higher friend support levels than those in the community rehabilitation center. These findings suggest that consumers must have willingness and power to mobilize their own social networks and relations when needed, besides having opportunities of access to social resources. The study implies that mental health practitioners should design interventions to enable consumers to increase reciprocal social relations with others and to facilitate their levels of access to social capital, which may lead to recovery of consumers. Future study and limitations are also discussed in the study.

Publication Statement

Copyright is held by the author. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.

Rights Holder

Su-fen Liu

Provenance

Received from ProQuest

File Format

application/pdf

Language

en

File Size

225 p.

Discipline

Social Work

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