A systematic review of nursing home research in three psychiatric journals: 1966–1985

This article presents the results of a systematic review of two decades of research on nursing home populations in three major psychiatric journals. The review indicates that very little psychiatric research has been undertaken in nursing home settings. The work that has been done is more often qualitative: case studies, program reports or reviews of the research, rather than quantitative research studies. The small amount of empirical research that has been published has suffered from sampling, design, and analytic shortcomings. Until recently, there has been little funded psychiatric research in nursing home setting, reflected in a worse than average disapproval rate for NIMH grant submissions involving nursing home populations. The implications of this review are discussed and recommendations are made for advancing this area of study among mental health professionals.