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Multiple perspectives on mental health outcome: needs for care and service satisfaction assessed by staff, patients and family members

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Abstract

Purpose

Community-based mental health care requires the involvement of staff, patients, and their family members when both planning intervention programmes and evaluating mental health outcomes. The present study aimed to compare the perceptions of these three groups on two important subjective mental health outcome measures—needs for care and service satisfaction—to identify potential areas of discrepancy.

Methods

The sample consisted of patients with a DSM diagnosis of psychosis and attending either outpatient or day centres operating in a community-based care system. Staff, patients and family members were assessed by using the CAN and the VSSS to evaluate, respectively, needs for care and service satisfaction. Kappa statistics were computed to assess agreement in the three groups.

Results

Patients identified significantly fewer basic (e.g. daytime activities, food, accommodation) and functioning needs (e.g. self-care, looking after home, etc.) than staff or family members. Only fair levels of agreement were found in the three groups (average kappa was 0.48 for staff and patients, 0.54 for staff and family members, and 0.45 for patients and relatives), with patients and family members showing more areas of discrepancies in both needs and service satisfaction.

Conclusions

These findings provide further support for the idea that mental health services should routinely involve patients and their relatives when planning and evaluating psychiatric intervention and that this policy is a premise for developing a partnership care model.

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Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Dr. Melinda Tucker for help in revising the final version of the manuscript and for her helpful comments on the manuscript’s content.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Public Health and Community Medicine, Section of Psychiatry and Clinical Psychology, University of Verona, Policlinico “G. B. Rossi”, 37134, Verona, Italy

    Antonio Lasalvia, Chiara Bonetto & Doriana Cristofalo

  2. Department of Mental Health, NHS Local Trust Legnago, Legnago, VR, Italy

    Ileana Boggian, Violetta Saggioro, Gabriella Piccione, Cristiana Zanoni & Dario Lamonaca

Authors
  1. Antonio Lasalvia
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  2. Ileana Boggian
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  3. Chiara Bonetto
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  4. Violetta Saggioro
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Correspondence to Antonio Lasalvia.

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Lasalvia, A., Boggian, I., Bonetto, C. et al. Multiple perspectives on mental health outcome: needs for care and service satisfaction assessed by staff, patients and family members. Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol 47, 1035–1045 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-011-0418-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-011-0418-0

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