The Life Adjustment Team

The Team Concept

Hope for sustained recovery is better today than was ever imagined just thirty years ago! While there has been significant progress in the development of new medications that reduce symptoms, equally important is the empowering knowledge and skills patients can attain through state-of-the-art rehabilitation to manage their illnesses and enjoy meaningful, productive lives.

In the mid-seventies, it took a patient weeks, and sometimes months of inpatient treatment to recover sufficiently to be discharged. However, all too often, they returned to the same circumstances, repeating old patterns. Patients did not have the opportunity to learn how to manage their illness, and would frequently relapse and need to be re-hospitalized. While today hospital stays are much shorter, the same problem exists.

The Life Adjustment Team was developed in 1977 to address this problem, providing the necessary structure, support, and resources for learning the skills essential for stability and successful reintegration into the community. Over the past twenty-five years this approach has proven to be instrumental in significantly reducing or eliminating the need for repeated hospitalizations.

Our first client was a young woman who, seven years earlier, had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, and had a history of repeated hospitalizations at some of the finest facilities in the country. The Team was constructed as a home-visit support team under the supervision of her psychiatrist. Our mission was to teach her practical ways of addressing specific areas, such as medication compliance, developing a network of friends and social activities, attending to the tasks of daily living, and attaining a reasonable level of independence. It took time to build trust, and many strategies and approaches were tried before our persistence paid off. Eventually, she began to make progress and achieve her goals. By participating in our skills training programs, this young woman learned the value of independent living, including adhering to her medication regimen, resuming driving, living in her own apartment, and eventually obtaining a part-time job.

We have experienced many such outcomes, however, no two people are alike. We have found over the years that each client requires an individualized, goal-specific treatment plan.

The programs and services currently offered by the Team are a combination of what we have learned from the experience of working with clients and their families on a daily basis, the tremendous growth in the field of psychosocial rehabilitation, our collaboration with the UCLA Research Center for Schizophrenia and Psychiatric Rehabilitation. Our focus remains on community-based outpatient rehabilitation. Special emphasis is placed on teaching the necessary skills to recognize and manage, or alleviate symptoms commonly associated with many types of brain disorders. It has been our experience that with consistent, persistent effort we can teach each client who is willing to participate in rehabilitation to "Learn to live well."