Status Congruency and Mental Health

Abstract

This study evaluated a status-congruency model in relationship to effective military performance after psychiatric contact and compared the status-congruency score distributions for psychiatric outpatients with those for non-psychiatric controls. The congruency scores contributed uniquely to the prediction of post-outpatient-contact performance, accounting for a significant amount of the criterion variance beyond a linear combination of its components. The outpatients who were congruent or who exhibited accelerated promotions were more effective than their underachieving, outpatient peers. Score distribution comparisons indicated that the outpatient-contact group had fewer accelerated achievers and more negatively incongruent members than non-psychiatric controls.