Hospitalized African American Mental Health Consumers: Some Antecedents to Service Satisfaction and Intent to Comply With Aftercare.

This study evaluated antecedents to (a) African Americans' satisfaction with inpatient mental health service provision, (b) their willingness to attend aftercare appointments on discharge from the hospital, and (c) their primary therapists' satisfaction with the services they provided. Subjects were 121 African Americans recruited from the admissions unit of a psychiatric hospital serving a rural southern population. Results indicated that determinants of satisfaction with service provision included increased quality of life and perceived empathy. The only significant determinant of intent to comply with aftercare was perceived staff empathy. For the primary therapists, quality of life was positively related to service satisfaction, whereas low levels of symptom improvement and perceived empathy were negatively related to service provision satisfaction.