Familial Expectations and Posthospital Performance of Mental Patients

2 questions are considered: (1) what is the relationship between patients' post hospital performance levels & familial expectations? & (2) what is the relationship of patients' post hospital performance levels to fam structure? A direct relationship was hyp'ed between the performance level of the patient & the expectations of fam members on the assumption that congruence between expectation & performance is essential to the stability of an interpersonal system. Also, that relatives with low expectations were more likely to be mothers than wives & would tend to be anomic, authoritarian, frustrated, rigid & withdrawn. The F informants interviewed were all relatives, predominantly wives & mothers, of M patients with functional disorders who had succeeded in remaining in the community a year of more since release from a mental hosp. Of the 209 interviews attempted, 182 were completed. Relatives of patients whose familial role is that of son tend to have lower expectations than do relatives of patients whose familial role is husband. Though the magnitudes of the is are low & therefore the stability of the relationships less than certain, relatives with low expectations appear to be somewhat more anomic, authoritarian, frustrated, rigid & withdrawn than those with high expectations. Patients who perform at low levels appear to cluster in households when other M actors are available as functional equivalents to occupy or share the occupancy of, roles normatively prescribed for the former patient. Age-sex indexes were also developed. With respect to the index for M's, almost twice as many fam's with means in the same generation range have patients who perform at low levels as those fam's whose means fall within the range of either 'ascending generation' or 'descending generation.' A.