Mental Health Care Needs More Improvement

A survey of people using community mental health services has revealed there is still some way to go before all services are accessible to people who need them.

A Health Commission survey shows that more attention needs to be paid to involving people in their care. In 2008, almost a quarter (24%) of people say they were not involved in deciding what was in their care plan, suggesting no significant improvement over previous years. Furthermore, 16% of service users say their diagnosis was not discussed with them.

The survey also showed room for improvement around access to counselling services such as talking therapies. Of the 62% of service users who did not receive any counselling almost a third of those (32%) would have liked to.

Overall, most respondents continued to rate their care highly, with 78% describing it as "excellent", "very good" or "good", 13% as "fair" and 9% as "poor" or "very poor". These figures remain consistent with previous surveys.

A larger percentage of service users say that they have confidence in mental health professionals, receive copies of their care plan and have a number to contact out-of-hours when in a crisis situation.

Commenting on the survey results, Anna Walker, Chief Executive of the Healthcare Commission, said: "The survey shows steady improvement in how service users rate key aspects of their care. This is good news for trusts and good news for the people who access community mental health services. But more must be done to improve access to care, in particular to talking therapies and out-of-hours crisis care, and to involve people in decisions about their treatment."

The survey invited feedback from people who were receiving care under the Care Programme Approach (CPA), which was established in 1991 for those who regularly access mental health services. The CPA sets out guidelines for how care should be coordinated and how service users should be involved in decisions.

(CD/JM)