Commissioned by Janssen, this report examines the pursuit of outcomes by mental health services.
There has been an increasing interest in the concept of value-based health care and how resources are allocated to improve outcomes. However, measuring outcomes in mental health services is often complex and fraught with difficulty, with professionals and service users often having very different perspectives on the nature of mental illness and the role of services in addressing it.
About the report
Through a series of over 100 conversations with people actively involved in mental health services in England including current and former service users, the report highlights how frameworks for measuring outcomes are often too narrowly focused on clinical outcomes. Whilst recovery-based frameworks are trying to widen this, neither fully captures what really matters to people.
The report challenges those in mental health to find a consensus on the outcomes that matter to people with mental health problems. Services should adopt a broader perspective on outcomes as a basis for collaborating with service users and a foundation for delivering more humane and effective care.