Over 15,000 people give their views of community mental health services

Participants in the latest survey of community mental health services said they are treated with dignity and respect by the health or social care worker they had seen most recently. However, some would have liked more support in getting help with aspects of day-to-day living.

More than 15,000 people responded to the survey to tell us about their experiences of community mental health services. 

People shared their experiences of services such as outpatient clinics, local teams providing crisis home treatment and more.

The vast majority of participants said that they:

• were treated with respect and dignity, were listened to carefully and had trust and confidence in the health or social care worker they had seen most recently.
• had the out-of-hours contact number of someone from their local NHS mental health service.
• could ‘always’ contact their care co-ordinator/lead professional if they had a problem and that their care co-ordinator/lead professional organised their care and services ‘very well’.

However, over a third of participants who had physical health needs said that they would have liked more support from a member of staff at their mental health service but didn’t get it.

The survey results also suggest that a considerable proportion of respondents who needed help would have liked more support in some aspects of day-to-day living such as:

• caring responsibilities.
• finding or keeping work.
• finding or keeping their accommodation.
• financial advice or benefits.

Mental health providers involved in the survey should now look at the results and carefully consider whether they are correctly assessing the needs of people in the Care Programme Approach and whether they are giving people the right level of support.

More on the survey

Visit Community mental health survey 2012 to read more key findings.

You can also view the A-Z list of community mental health services survey results by NHS trust.