Satisfaction with mental health community services among patients' relatives

This study aims to assess the satisfaction of family members of patients of mental health community services through a tested, validated and previously applied scale in order to allow comparison of results.

The results were obtained by applying the scale SATIS-BR to 1242 relatives of patients of 40 mental health community services in Brazil. The average scores of the three subscales of the SATIS-BR scale were compared using the Wilcoxon test. To measure statistical significance for each item of the scale, the Friedman test was applied, considering significant p-value < 0.05.

The average overall satisfaction score was 4.35 with a standard deviation (SD) of 0.44, with a range varying from 1 to 5. The subscale with the highest score refers to the "Results of Treatment", what presents scores of 4.54 with SD of 0.66. As for the other subscales, which refer to "Reception and Staff Competence" and "Service Privacy and Confidentiality" had scores of 4.25 (SD: 0.51) and 4.17 (SD: 0.51).

The high level of satisfaction with the service among families of patients highlights the potential of these services and their contribution to the advance of a model of mental health community care, as it seems to be the global trend. The different results between the scales further suggest that the family distinguishes different aspects of the service and evaluates separately, providing a good reference for evaluation studies.