A Controlled Trial of Goal Setting for Long-Term Community Psychiatric Patients

Clinical goal setting is a widely advocated, yet poorly documented technique. This paper describes a controlled trial which was carried out with long-term community psychiatric patients. The experimental group received goal setting in the form of goal attainment scaling (GAS), whilst the control group received social reinforcement. The experimental group had a higher goal score and a significantly higher sessional involvement (p<0.05). The goal categories decided by the clinicians as relevant, differed from those wished by the subjects; the latter subsequently attained only low goal scores. There were no significant differences between the two groups on the work performance or social interaction outcome measures. These differences between the two groups were obtained despite the fact that the subjects of the research were the most intransigent to treatment. It is suggested that goal setting is an independent treatment technique which requires further substantiation, particularly amongst occupational therapists who are covertly or overtly employing the technique. Further research must address the question of identifying the characteristics of patients most likely to benefit from goal setting.