Treatment for People with Severe Mental Disorders - Essay Example

The move of study is aimed at keeping mentally ill people in contact with relevant services, improving outcomes, and reducing hospital admissions. The program will engage adults aged between 18 to 65 years. This study is aimed at investigating the effectiveness of Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) as opposed to standard community care and hospital-based treatment. This will be met by categorizing data from numerical data that is based on real-life counts and numeric data from scales or standardized instruments.

Research Design
            This study overlooks and proposes the intervention of ACT as opposed to standard care and hospitalization. It investigates the condition and viability of patients specifically with statistics after undergoing the ACT and compares it with those hospitalized or under standard community care.

            It will overlook specific changes and participation of victims in community services as perceived by the researchers based on calculated statistics on the ACT and hospital-based patients. Bearing in mind that, the significant increase of people with severe mental illness deters them from achieving their goals, it also reduces the progress of the entire community as many are ineffective to work and promote the development of the community (Marshall, 1998, p. 3).

Description of Intended Population
            The majority of participants are aged between the ranges of 18 to 65 years. Most of this population is subject to schizophrenia disorders, bipolar disorder, and psychotic features from people of Atlanta in the United States. Substance abuse people are excluded from this study as they are not considered to be a severe mental disorder in nature is move is meant to produce accurate results.

Recruitment Methods
            The contacts will be made with the families and friends of the victims. These contacts will be obtained from a number of databases through electronic searches. This includes searches using CSG terms for randomized trials, schizophrenia Groups, and the CPA (Care and Program and Approach). Once the patient has been identified and successfully reached through a phone, the investigator will explain the purpose and procedures, in brief, to let the patient understand the objective, and risks involved and make a decision on their own.

Procedure for Obtaining Consent
            Participation by a patient will not involve any incentive. Recruitment of people takes place through the phone with verbal consent. The consent will then be recorded in the writings and later mailed to all the participants after participation.
5. Data Collecting Procedures
There are two main types of data outcomes available for this study. They include categorical data, which focuses on real-life counts of or the count data, and the numerical data collected by standardized instruments or scale data. Categorical data will first be extracted twice, then later checked to cross checked. Ultimately, the Peto Odds Ratios and the NNT (Number Needed to Treat) will also be calculated. The numeric count data will also be extracted two times and checked sequentially. For any technical reasons, count data will be combined across studies. However, all observations based on the data will be reported in the review. The validity of the data will be also assessed. Numeric scale data of suitable quality will be combined by the use of a standardized mean difference statistic where necessary (Parker, 1997).
All records on patients will be recorded for the purpose of this study. All the personal information and medical history of the patient will be recorded in a computer database. The scores of pre and post-diagnosis results from the patients’ psychological tests will be gathered before and after participation (Altman, 1996).
6. Description of Method
The methodology will perceive the criteria of this study and all the types of studies involved. The study includes all the relevant and randomized controlled trials. For an intervention to be accepted as ACT, it must have been in the trial report.
7. Risk and Benefits
As part of the study, an examination of the data is identified, including past medical history. Hence the risks are minimized. The patients are contacted first and given a general overview of the procedure involved and then leave it to the patient to decide whether to participate or ignore. This is a remarkable benefit to the patients. However, there may be risks of bias. For instance, of all the 75 trials, only 17 will be likely to meet the inclusion criteria. It is possible that the findings of the above trials will be a result of type II errors or biased data collection methods.
8. Data Analysis Plan
The data will be analyzed in terms of ACT versus standard care, whereby, the numbers marinating contact with the services provided by the psychiatrist will be recorded. Another data analysis plan will be run for ACT versus hospitals rehabilitation and all the data will be compared.
The results will then be merged, to obtain copies of all papers pertaining to two trials in the pool. The trials will be then evaluated in the pool and a decision made concerning the pool to be included in the systematic review of the ACT (Mulrow, 1997, p. 5).