A comparison of satisfaction with clinician, family members/friends and attorneys as payees

Clients disabled by psychiatric illness may be assigned mental health clinicians as payees. We compared client-payee interactions among 42 clients with clinician-payees, 20 whose payees were family or friends and nine with attorney-payees. Compared to clients with attorney-payees, clients with clinician-payees felt more satisfied and more involved in their money management, and had had more contacts with their payees in the previous month. Clients' satisfaction with family/friend payees was similar to that with clinician payees. In multivariate analyses, whether or not the payee had had training about mental illness accounted for 33% of the variance in satisfaction with the payee.