[International Classification of Mental Health Care (ICMHC)--description and application]

Over the last decades the interest in evaluating mental health care has greatly increased, in particular with regard to the possibilities to evaluate the health care process. It is connected with three processes: decentralization of psychiatric services, increasing significance of the treatment within the community and evaluation of the cost-effectiveness of mental health care programmes. There is a lack of tools to describe the process of providing mental health care. One of these tools is The International Classification of Mental Health Care (ICMHC) which has been elaborated by A. de Jong. The ICMHC is designed to give a description and classification of procedures and interventions delivered within mental health facilities. The ICMHC introduces the term of a module of care. It is an organizational or functional unit, which provides mental health care or psychosocial rehabilitation. The package of available care needs within the module of care can be described with ten modalities of care. The modality of care is a category including all interventions covering together mental health care in that facility. The ICMHC is a questionnaire used to assess the therapeutic process within the EDEN project in Poland, which was founded by the EC in 2000-2003. Nevertheless, the knowledge of the tool in Poland is still inconsiderable.