Diachronic trends of employment outcome of prevocational training in psychiatric rehabilitation.

Background: Although many rehabilitation programmes of prevocational training for chronic mentally ill persons living in the community have been funded, there is scarce literature about the diachronic trends of their long-term employment outcome. Thus the aim of the present study was to compare the 2-year employment outcome of three groups of chronic psychiatric outpatients, having attended similar prevocational rehabilitation programmes in different periods of time.

Methods: The first group (1984 to 1986) comprised 67 rehabilitees, the second (1988 to 1989) 53 rehabilitees and the third (2000 to 2001) 56 rehabilitees.