Assessment of the psychosocial environments of community-oriented psychiatric treatment programs.

This paper describes the development of a scale, the Community-Oriented Programs Environment Scale (COPES), which attempts to systematically assess the psychosocial environments of transitional community-oriented psychiatric treatment programs such as halfway houses, rehabilitation centers, day care centers, and community care homes. The psychometric characteristics of the scale are given, sample program profiles are illustrated, and potential applications are discussed. The assumption that the immediate psychological environment in which patients and staff function is an important, if not the crucial, aspect of the overall treatment process is reflected in many descriptions of both inpatient ward and community-oriented psychiatric programs (e.g., Jones, 1953; Stanton