Development of mental health service agencies in Shanghai / 中国心理卫生杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective:To investigate the development status of mental health service of Shanghai mental health agencies,and to provide reference for further strengthening the standardized management of service agencies.Methods:In Shanghai,107 mental health service agencies (including psychiatric institutions,non-specialist medical institutions,non-specialist enterprise and public institutions,social institutions) were selected from Shanghai psychological service industry association.Each person in charge of these agencies was interviewed with an adapted 5 l-item questionnaire.A total of 89 valid questionnaires were collected.In this study,25 items of the questionnaire (belonging to the parts of agency information,mental health service situation and management of mental health service) were selected and analyzed.Results:All the surveyed agencies had been registered.The average age of these agencies for setting up mental health service was 8.9 years,and the average age of psychiatric institutions was the longest (18.6 years).Besides,psychiatric institutions attracted most of the clients (83.9％) in 2015.Among the professionals,only 32.5％ were full time,74.0％ were female,41.5％ were between 31 and 40 years old and 63.8％ were undergraduates.Psychiatrists,psychotherapists,counselors and psychometric person accounted for 78.0％ of the professionals in these agencies.Only 52.3％ of the agencies had full-time management personnel for mental health service.The most used method of assessing the quality of service and staff assessment was to obtain feedback from the client/family members (81.0％) and the assessment of the services (78.8％).Conclusion:The development of mental health service in Shanghai mental health agencies has been more normalized,but there is still a lack of full-time professionals.In addition,there is a lack of unified supervision and management mechanism for professionals.