Factors Associated with Satisfaction with a Community Mental Health Service

Abstract

This study’s objective was to simultaneousy assess the factors associated with the satisfaction of 84 patients and 84 family members with treatment and the satisfaction of 67 professionals with the work performed in a mental health service. This is a quantitative cross-sectional study with a correlational design and multivariate data analysis. The participants responded to satisfaction scales and sociodemographic questionnaires. The results indicate that the following variables predicted the level of satisfaction: age at onset of psychiatric disorder; being supported by the professionals; receiving information about treatment; level of education; and years of work in mental health services. The results reveal that establishing a partnership with the families of patients is important to ensuringtheir satisfaction and treatment adherence, while the way the public health system manages the professionals’ careers has contributed to their dissatisfaction, requiring urgent reformulation.

Assessing the Perception of Family and Caregivers’ Experience with Mental Health and Substance Use Services

“…This emphasis on the role of the family and other loved ones builds upon a wealth of research evidence about the important role they play in encouraging help-seeking (Urbanoski et al, 2017) and contributing to positive outcomes (Fujino & Okamura, 2009;Innes et al, 2011;Visio et al, 2019) . Other studies have noted that measuring family and caregiver satisfaction with their loved one's treatment and support may be helpful in improving services (Dourado et al, 2018;Jiang et al, 2019;Resende et al, 2019) . Studies by Gigantesco et al (2002) and Perreault et al (2012) show the importance of understanding the collaborative role of family caregivers and how to integrate them into treatment, support planning, and service delivery.…”

“…This highlights the importance of gathering caregiver perspectives to support performance measurement and quality improvement initiatives in addition to the perspectives of clients and patients. Although the experiences of family caregivers and the direct service recipients may differ, they provide complementary perspectives (Garland et al, 2007;Resende et al, 2019). As shown by Garland et al (2007), when comparing feedback from parents and youth about their experience with a community mental health service, the correlation between youth and parent satisfaction was low.…”

“…As particular predictors of satisfaction were associated with youth or parents, there may be a marked benefit to evaluating service satisfaction differently among these two groups. Similarly, Resende et al (2019) compared satisfaction across service participants, family members and staff, and found that "feeling supported by the professionals who provide care to the patient" (p. 5) and "receiving information regarding the patient's psychiatric disorder" (p. 5) stood out as being particularly important to family members. In an inpatient mental health setting, other important factors have been identified, including treatment cost, the amount of direct service received per day, and staffing-related factors, such as perceived adequacy of staff training and bed ratios per patient population (Jiang et al, 2019).…”