The Effectiveness of Program to Promote Empowerment and Self-Advocacy of the Mentally Disabled Persons' Families

정신장애인가족의 임파워먼트와 자기옹호 증진을 위한 프로그램의 효과

Purpose: This study was to verify the effectiveness of group program for promoting empowerment and self-advocacy of the the mentally disabled persons' families. Methods: This program was set up for the mentally disabled persons' families to share their experiences, do consciousness raising, advocate themselves through group process. A pre-post control group design was used for this study. Results: The results of this study verified that group program was effective to promote empowerment and self advocacy of the mentally disabled persons' families. Also group program helped to express and ventilate family burden actively. Conclusion: This study suggests as follows. In the mental health social work practice we need to develop group programs for family to talk about themselves, to ventilate their emotions, to understand their circumstances and to initiative the change of mental health circumstances as well as education and coping skills about mental illness. For this, there is a need for mental health social worker to have a macroscopic viewpoint and work with family. Also there is a need for mental health social worker to promote family self-help groups and to support their construction and growth.