Self-Esteem Research, Theory, and Practice Toward a Positive ...

224 SELF-ESTEEM RESEARCH, THEORY, AND PRACTICEmulti-county, comprehensive, community mental services program. Theparticipants ranged in age from late teens to mid-60s and were over-representedin terms of women and underrepresented in terms of minorities,although some of the participants were men and others were individualsfrom minority populations. These parameters are fairly typical of thecommunity mental health environment. The subjects were divided intosix medium-sized groups. I led each group with a co-therapist who differedfrom group to group. Two of the groups were composed of individualsfrom the general population who were not in treatment at themental health facility. Two of the groups consisted of people with nonpsychoticmental health diagnoses who were in treatment at the center.The remaining two groups were from the chemical dependency population:One consisted of people with a diagnosis who were in treatment atthe facility; the other involved “co-dependent” family members, most ofwhom were not related to people in the other treatment groups. All of theparticipants were given the MSEI at the beginning of the treatment, andall of those who completed the program were tested once again at theend. They were also asked to fill out a qualitative questionnaire concerningtheir experience of the program and changes in themselves related tocompetence and worthiness.The research design was not perfect in that we did not have theluxury of using a control group. Like most “real world” environments,the community mental health system is funded by state and local tax dollars,and forcing people to wait for service is ethically questionable.However, the conditions in this study were the ones most therapists arelikely to encounter in practice. And there is considerable literature on theimportance of doing research under these conditions using methods similarto our own (Kazdin, 1992; Seligman, 1995a). In addition, the studydid include a comparison group of participants who were not diagnosedas having a mental health problem at the time. Also, the results of theresearch were surprisingly robust. Finally, there were no significantpretest differences between those participants who dropped out and thosewho stayed, suggesting that the results were not being influenced by thiskind of selection factor.Most important, every MSEI scale for self-esteem showed statisticallysignificant positive changes between pre- and post-testing, which isexactly what we would expect if the program worked. Moreover, thequalitative data corroborated these statistical findings in that the subjectsreported a high degree of satisfaction with the program and with positivechanges in their self-esteem as it is defined by the program. We also did afollow-up session 6 months later, which is a long time in the communitymental health situation. Subjects who attended the meeting reported continuingchange and satisfaction with the program. These findings and