Controlling outcomes through impression-management: An experimental study of the manipulative tactics of mental patients.

An attempt to explore mental patient's attitudes toward staying or leaving the mental hospital, their use of impression management as a strategy to increase the probability of satisfying these desires, and the relationship between mental patient strategies and discharge rates. The study found that old-timers (who have the lowest discharge rate in the hospital) will attempt to present themselves on mental status tests as ill and ineligible for discharge while short-timers (who have the highest discharge rate in the hospital) will present themselves on mental status tests as healthy and eligible for discharge. The findings were presented as supporting the assumptions that mental patients are not necessarily helpless and ineffectual people and that they will try, in many ways, to determine their hospital fate. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)