Η στάθμιση του ερωτηματολογίου Verona Service Satisfaction Scale-54 (VSSS-54) στην Ελλάδα

Mental Health Care Reforms in Latin America: Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services in Mexico

Abstract: People with psychiatric disabilities face barriers to employment both in the larger community and within the mental health system itself. Strategies used to affirmatively employ people with psychiatric disabilities as research personnel in an evaluation of community mental health services are described in this article. Our goal was to address two critical issues in the provision and evaluation of mental health services: the importance of meaningful work and productivity in the lives of people with psychiatric disabilities, and obtaining valid and reliable data regarding the effectiveness of community mental health services. A three-phase methodology for developing affirmative employment opportunities is presented, consisting of three components: affirmative planning, affirmative support, and affirmative rigour and method. The methodology is intended as a guide to assist evaluators and researchers in fulfilling the vision of the Canadian Human Rights Act and the Employment Equity Act.

The 11th Australian Rural and Remote Mental Health Symposium Communiqué.

Perceived Effectiveness of Medications Among Mental Health Service Users With and Without Alcohol Dependence

Needs for and Barriers to Correctional Mental Health Services: Inmate Perceptions

In every sector, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of mental health resources for wellbeing. Although scholars have long recognized the interdependent relationship between academic success and positive mental health, research that can be used to guide mental health service design and delivery in post-secondary institutions is relatively unexplored. Further, the experiences of practitioners, in their day-to-day operations toward understanding and responding to student mental health problems, are an under-recognized source of data that can contribute to more effective planning and implementation. The objective of this project is to use practitioner action research principles to design, implement, and evaluate a mental health and addiction services plan at Brock University in Ontario, Canada. This paper details what occurred in the plan-act-observe-reflect cycles as practitioners gathered qualitative data using interviews and the World Café methodology. Results show improvement in student satisfaction ratings with on-campus mental health services. Our experience reveals that practitioner action research is a useful framework for practitioners seeking a systematic process to contribute to both fields of knowledge and fields of practice.

Although Italian mental health (MH) services are community based, user and relative participation in service evaluation lagged behind until lately. We here review three recent studies involving stakeholder participation in service evaluation: two were quantitative studies, one on 204 users in an MH service in Pistoia (Central Italy) and the other on 2259 relatives, conducted with the National Union of Associations for Mental Health. The third (supported by The Centro per il Controllo delle Malattie, the ministerial Center for Disease Control) was a qualitative study in seven MH services, involving users, relatives, and professionals together, which collected interviews from 136 users, 119 relatives, and 79 professionals. In the quantitative studies, positive evaluations outnumbered negative ones. The qualitative study explored negative aspects in greater depth. Common findings were insufficient information, underinvolvement of users-relatives in planning, no choice of clinician, psychiatrist domination, and limited helpfulness of interventions. With stakeholder participation in service evaluation, the present medical framework will need reshaping.

In Australia, mental health services are delivered by a complex web of public- and private-sector providers. There is a growing recognition that linkages between these groups are not optimal, and a concern that this may lead to poor outcomes. This paper illustrates a conceptual framework for developing, implementing and evaluating programmes concerned with linkages. Drawing on theoretical and practical literature, this paper identifies different levels of integration, issues in evaluating programmes to address poor linkages, and features of useful evaluations. Within this context, it describes the method by which the Public and Private Partnerships in Mental Health Project (Partnership Project) is being evaluated. Conducted by St Vincent's Mental Health Service and The Melbourne Clinic, this is one of several Demonstration Projects in Integrated Mental Health Care funded under the National Mental Health Strategy. Collaboration is hard to conceptualize and collaborative programmes usually have many players and components, and tend to operate within already-complex systems. This creates difficulties for evaluation, in terms of what to measure, how to measure it, and how to interpret findings. In spite of these difficulties, the illustrative example demonstrates a model for evaluating collaborative programmes that is currently working well because it is strongly conceptualized, descriptive, comparative, constructively sceptical, positioned from the bottom up, and collaborative. This model, or aspects of it, could be extended to the evaluation of other mental health programmes and services that have collaborative elements.

The need for evaluation of mental health services is emphasized repeatedly by mental health leaders, state and federal officials, third-party payers, and others concerned with the quality and costeffectiveness of mental health care. Although a growing number of evaluation studies are being conducted, they are frequently criticized because of poor study design, lack of methodological rigor, and failure to produce information that has practical implications for improving mental health services. Hospital & Community Psychiatry asked several evaluation specialists to briefly discuss basic issues and approaches in mental health evaluation and to list books or articles that they consider particularly useful for mental health professionals with limited experience in conducting evaluation studies. We think their comments, presented here, are of interest to all who are concerned with improving the quality of mental health evaluation. The contributors are identified on page 731.

Meso-level Comparison of Mental Health Service Availability and Use in Chile and Spain

There is limited empirical evidence on the extent to which perceived public stigma prevents individuals from using mental health services, despite substantial recent policy interest in this issue. This study investigated associations between perceived public stigma and mental health care seeking. This study used cross-sectional survey data from a representative sample of undergraduate and graduate students (N=2,782) at one university. A five-item scale was used to assess perceived public stigma toward mental health service use. Perceived need for help in the past 12 months and current presence of depressive and anxiety disorders were also assessed. Perceived stigma was higher among males, older students, Asian and Pacific Islanders, international students, students with lower socioeconomic status backgrounds, and students with current mental health problems. Perceived stigma was also higher among those without any family members or friends who had used mental health services and among those who believed that therapy or medication is not very helpful. Perceived stigma was negatively associated with the likelihood of perceiving a need for mental health services, but only among younger students. Among those with probable depressive or anxiety disorders, there was no evidence that perceived stigma was associated with service use. These results suggest that, at least in this population, perceived stigma may not be as important a barrier to mental health care as the mental health policy discourse currently assumes.

The importance of needs assessment has been one of the most consistent themes to emerge from the evolution of community mental health services. The term ‘need’ has become especially influential in European mental health practice. In the UK, for example, national policy has emphasized the importance of needs assessment underpinning the planning, development, and evaluation of mental health services. However, the concept of ‘need’ is used in different, and sometimes contradictory, ways. At the individual level, all mental health and social care should be provided on the basis of need. At the population level, funding allocation is intended to match the needs of the population, so that whether or not overall resources are adequate, efficiency and equity are achieved. The aim of this chapter is to define needs assessment, to consider different approaches to assessing needs at the individual and at the population levels, and to discuss how needs assessments can be applied in real-world settings in planning and delivering clinical care.

Involving consumer-providers in mental health teams results in psychosocial, mental health symptom and service use outcomes for clients that were no better or worse than those achieved by professionals employed in similar roles, particularly for case management services.There is low quality evidence that involving consumer-providers in mental health teams results in a small reduction in clients' use of crisis or emergency services. The nature of the consumer-providers' involvement differs compared to professionals, as do the resources required to support their involvement. The overall quality of the evidence is moderate to low. There is no evidence of harm associated with involving consumer-providers in mental health teams.Future randomised controlled trials of consumer-providers in mental health services should minimise bias through the use of adequate randomisation and concealment of allocation, blinding of outcome assessment where possible, the comprehensive reporting of outcome data, and the avoidance of contamination between treatment groups. Researchers should adhere to SPIRIT and CONSORT reporting standards for clinical trials.Future trials should further evaluate standardised measures of clients' mental health, adverse outcomes for clients, the potential benefits and harms to the consumer-providers themselves (including need to return to treatment), and the financial costs of the intervention. They should utilise consistent, validated measurement tools and include a clear description of the consumer-provider role (eg specific tasks, responsibilities and expected deliverables of the role) and relevant training for the role so that it can be readily implemented. The weight of evidence being strongly based in the United States, future research should be located in diverse settings including in low- and middle-income countries.

1. Mental Health Services for Children, Adolescents and Families: Trends, Models, and Current Status. Ric G. Steele and Michael C. Roberts. 2. Mental Health Services for Young Children. Diane Powell and Glen Dunlap. 3. School Psychology Services. Steven W. Lee and T. Rene Jamison. 4. Providing Services Within a School-Based Intensive Mental Health Program. Anne K. Jacobs, Camille Randall, Eric M. Vernberg, Michael C. Roberts and Joseph E. Nyre. 5. Inpatient Pediatric Consultation-Liaison: Applied Child Health Psychology. Bryan D. Carter and Renee T. von Weiss. 6. Mental Health Services for Children in Pediatric Primary Care Settings. Terry Stancin. 7. Providing a Range of Services to Fit the Needs of Youth in Community Mental Health Centers. Julianne M. Smith-Boydston. 8. Outpatient - Private Practice Model. Bernadette M. Landolf. 9. Inpatient Treatment Models. Luis A. Vargas, and Artemio de Dios Brambila. 10. Child Abuse Prevention and Intervention Services. Michelle R. Kees and Barbara L. Bonner. 11. Services to Prevent Sexually Transmitted Diseases in Adolescents. Beth A. Auslander, Mary B. Short, and Susan L. Rosenthal. 12. Treatment Services for Adolescent Substance Abuse. Beverly Pringle. 13. Targeted Prevention of Antisocial Behavior in Children: The Early Risers 'Skills for Success' Program. Michael L. Bloomquist, Gerald J. August, Susanne S. Lee, Barrie E. Berquist, and Robin Mathy. 14. Implementing Effective Youth Violence Prevention Programs in Community Settings. Patricia A. Graczyk and Patrick H. Tolan. 15. Adolescent Sex Offender Programs. William D. Murphy, Jacqueline Page, and Rebecca Ettelson. 16. Rural Mental Health Services. David L. Fenell and Alan J. Hovestadt. 17. Mental Health Services for Children with Chronic Illness. Ann M. McGrath and Ngan Vuong. 18. Psychological Services forChildren and Families who are Homeless. Mary E. Walsh and Julie Heim Jackson. 19. Telehealth/Internet Services for Children, Adolescents, and Families. Heidi J. Liss. 20. Therapeutic Camping Programs. Keri J. Brown. 21. Implementation of the Felix Consent Decree in Hawaii: The Impact of Policy and Practice Development Efforts on Service Delivery. Bruce F. Chorpita and Christina Donkervoet. 22. Emergency Services and Disaster Relief. Gilbert Reyes. 23. Program Evaluation Approaches to Service Delivery in Child and Family Mental Health. Michael C. Roberts and Ric G. Steele. 24. Large Scale Evaluations of Children's Mental Health Services: The Ft. Bragg and Start County Studies. Leonard Bickman and Shelagh Mulvaney. 25 Methodological Challenges in the National Evaluation of the Comprehensive Community Medical Health Services for Children and their Families Program. E. Wayne Holden, Robert L. Stephens, and Rolando L. Santiago. 26 Future Service Organization and Research Agenda

Predictors of Likelihood and Intensity of Past-Year Mental Health Service Use in an Active Canadian Military Sample