Group and organizational involvement among persons with psychiatric disabilities in supported housing.

This study examined the patterns and correlates of group and organizational involvement among persons with psychiatric disabilities using a cross-sectional, probability sample of 252 residents in supported independent housing (SIH). Groups and organizations were classified according to whether or not they have a behavioral health focus. Demographic, clinical, and service use characteristics were examined as potential predictors of membership using Poisson regression models. Findings indicated that 60% of the sample was involved in some kind of behavioral or nonbehavioral health organization. Similar to the findings from the general population, higher rates of membership were found among older persons, Blacks, those with more years of education, and those with higher incomes. Other correlates specific to the SIH sample included prior homelessness, perceived discrimination, substance abuse history, psychiatric symptoms, psychiatric diagnosis, and contact with service providers. Implications of study findings for developing intervention strategies to enhance organizational membership and for future research are discussed.

Medical errors in psychiatry.

Medical errors in the general medical sector result in significant patient deaths and injuries, as well as high costs to the health care system. Despite the growing literature on errors in medical and surgical specialties, few studies have examined the incidence, nature, predictors, and prevention of errors that may occur in mental health treatment settings. The purpose of the current review is to examine the lessons learned from patient-safety research in the general medical sector, provide examples of types of errors in psychiatry, review the errors identified in the literature, offer a discussion of error-reduction strategies for improving patient safety, and provide recommendations for future research. Increased attention to medical errors in psychiatry is necessary in order to build safer health systems and promote a culture of safety among providers, thereby producing better care for patients with mental disorders.

Retractions in the research literature: misconduct or mistakes?

OBJECTIVE: To determine how commonly articles are retracted on the basis of unintentional mistakes, and whether these articles differ from those retracted for scientific misconduct in authorship, funding, type of study, publication, and time to retraction. DATA SOURCE AND STUDY SELECTION: All retractions of English language publications indexed in MEDLINE between 1982 and 2002 were extracted. DATA EXTRACTION: Two reviewers categorised the reasons for retraction of each article as misconduct (falsification, fabrication, or plagiarism) or unintentional error (mistakes in sampling, procedures, or data analysis; failure to reproduce findings; accidental omission of information about methods or data analysis). DATA SYNTHESIS: Of the 395 articles retracted between 1982 and 2002, 107 (27.1%) were retracted because of scientific misconduct, 244 (61.8%) because of unintentional errors, and 44 (11.1%) could not be categorised. Compared with articles retracted because of misconduct, articles with unintentional mistakes were more likely to have multiple authors, no reported funding source, and to be published in frequently cited journals. They were more likely to be retracted by the author(s) of the article, and the retraction was more likely to occur more promptly (mean, 2.0 years; 95% CI, 1.8-2.2) than articles withdrawn because of misconduct (mean, 3.3 years; 95% CI, 2.7-3.9) (P < 0.05 for all comparisons). CONCLUSIONS: Retractions in the biomedical literature were more than twice as likely to result from unintentional mistakes than from scientific misconduct. The different characteristics of articles retracted for misconduct and for mistakes reflect distinct causes and, potentially, distinct solutions.