Patients' expectations from their psychiatric community care in Finland

Abstract

This study set out to evaluate overall patient satisfaction with psychiatric community care and to study the factors predicting level of satisfaction with the services. The level of overall satisfaction was fairly high and at the same level as in some other studies. There did not seem to be great difficulties in accessing the community care. Our results indicate that patients would prefer receiving more information about their disorder and its treatment. The stepwise logistic regression model indicated that the odds were 6.8-fold that the problems of mental health would become easier if the views of the patient were taken into consideration (P<0.05). The odds were 12.8-fold that the patient would recommend community care if he/her had felt him/herself understood and cared for (P<0.05). The odds were 5.9-fold that the patient experienced community care as effective if the therapist had understood the patient in the discussions (P=0.01). Evaluating the satisfaction of the patients should become routine practice throughout the services. Consequently, the views of the service users would be brought into decision-making procedures, and the services could be better modified on the basis of such views.