Psychiatric rehabilitation training needs of state vocational rehabilitation counselors: a preliminary study

Journal of Rehabilitation, July-Sept, 2005 by Gloria K. Lee, Julie Chronister, Hector Tsang, Kirby Ingraham, Eugene Oulvey

Limitations

The results of the present study provide some insights to the inadequacy of the training needs of VR counselors in this particular setting, who has a caseload of working with the psychiatric population. It reflects that the rehabilitation provision for this particular disability population is consistent with the legislations passed over the years, and that people with persistent and mental illnesses and people with the most significant disabilities needed to be served with priority in the public rehabilitation system. In addition, the results appear to be consistent with the current literature and research indicating that the implementation of psychiatric rehabilitation both at the graduate education level for students and continuing education training for practitioners are in demand. Even though the results of this study further confirm what the existing practice and trends are in the field, it is not without its limitations. There are potentially two methodological issues in this study that could further be improved for stronger evidence and that interpretation of the result should be subjected to readers' discretion. The first limitation relates to the psychometric properties of the instrument and the second one relates to the sampling method, which leads to the generalizability of the results. Although the development of the instrument was based on the scrutiny of a comprehensive review of the psychiatric rehabilitation literature, the CRCC KVI-R's content of the survey developed specifically for training needs for rehabilitation counseling by Leahy et al. (2003), and expert opinions from selected psychiatric practitioners, this modified instrument itself has not been subjected to a sole validation process. This preliminary study use this modified instrument as a tester to its validity, and further adoption of this instrument can be used to add evidence to its psychometric scrutiny. The second limitation relates to the issue of generalizability. The participants in this study were selected from one state VR agency, which would not make the results generalizable to all state VR agencies across the United States. Given that the results of the study appear to provide some potential applications for graduate education and continuing education for students and practitioners in the rehabilitation field, it can be used as a pilot study for exploratory purpose in preparation for potentially larger-scale studies adopting improved instrumentation and sampling method. Finally, further studies are necessary in the area of training needs for psychiatric rehabilitation for rehabilitation counselors so that the results can be a better reflection of the training needs of rehabilitation counselors with psychiatric caseload in the public state agencies in general. Subsequently, such training needs can be implemented for preparation of future rehabilitation counselors in graduate school as well as provision of in-service training for practitioners in the field of vocational rehabilitation for rehabilitation counseling.