Living in a group dwelling: how do residents spend their time in a psychiatric group dwelling?

The aim of the study was to investigate how residents at psychiatric group dwellings spend their time. The study consisted of two parts: questionnaires and an observation survey. It included all the staff at two municipal psychiatric group dwellings where the residents were primarily diagnosed as having long-term schizophrenia. This study indicated that, even if the dwellings had a creative climate, there was a negative process in terms of nurses’ well-being with a high level of depersonalisation. The residents who displayed a predominant picture of negative symptoms were left alone for 84% of the day, and 29.5% of this could be explained by their illness. The remainder of the residents’ time alone remains unexplained.