A study of outpatient satisfaction with mental health center services

In 1972 the authors conducted a study to determine the effect of encouraging patients to express their dissatisfaction with services received at a community mental health center in New York City. Half of the out-patients admitted to the center over a six-month period, a total of 270, were sent welcoming letters signed by the center director soliciting suggestions and complaints about services and listing staff members to whom they could be reported. Follow-up telephone interviews both with recipients of the letter and with nonrecipients, who formed a control group, showed that the recipients had fewer complaints about the center's services than did the nonrecipients. However, they failed to use the suggested channels to report a number of relatively serious complaints. The authors discuss the implications of the findings.