Values in mental health : an interface between mental health personnel, patients, and the general public

The purpose of this study was to determine if value research in mental health institutions could be facilitated by the use of a formal system of axiology developed by Robert S. Hartman in The Structure of Value. Lakeshore Mental Health Institute in West Knoxville, Tennessee, was the site of this research, and The Hartman Value Profile was chosen as a testing tool.

The primary means and procedures used in data assembly for this research was the selection, testing, and analysis of thirty persons from five groups; voluntary patients; involuntary patients, physicians, mental health personnel, and a control group. In this study I used the raw test data and compared it with Hartman's scales for the test indexes. To do this meant examining the means, medians, coefficients of variation, skewness scores, significant differences among groups, and Hartman's qualification of the mean scores.

The main findings of this research indicate, according to Hartman's system of formal axiology, that the mental health staff, physicians, and control groups showed no significant differences among the mean scores as valuers of their external world or of themselves. These groups did have significantly better scores than either the voluntary or involuntary patients.

Furthermore, the voluntary patients appeared to be better valuers in the external world than the involuntary patients, but intrinsically their scores were as poor as those of the involuntary patients, who consistently had the poorest scores of all five groups.

Many practical and theoretical questions evolved from this study, indicating that a number of test revisions should be made if The Hartman Value Profile is to be an accurate representation of the valuational capacities of groups tested. Because Hartman's applied formal axiology is in an early stage of development for testing purposes, further research is necessitated to assess some of the data for future study. Hartman's axiology does appear to have a unique and important place in the study of value in mental health institutions.