Exploring Access to Mental Health and Primary Care Services for People With Severe Mental Illness During the COVID-19 Restrictions
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Abstract
To explore: how satisfied people with severe mental illness (SMI) are with the support received during the pandemic; understand any difficulties encountered when accessing both mental health and primary care services; consider ways to mitigate these difficulties; and assess the perceived need for future support from mental health services.
Materials and Methods
A representative sample was drawn from a large transdiagnostic clinical cohort of people with SMI, which was recruited between April 2016 and March 2020. The sample was re-surveyed a few months after the beginning of the restrictions. Descriptive frequency statistics were used to analyze the quantitative data. The free text responses were analyzed thematically.
Results
367 participants responded to the survey. Two thirds were receiving support from mental health services with the rest supported in primary care or self-managing. A quarter thought they would need more mental health support in the coming year. Half had needed to used community mental health services during the pandemic and the majority had been able to get support. A minority reported that their mental health had deteriorated but they had either not got the supported they wanted or had not sought help. The biggest service change was the reduction in face-to-face appointments and increasing use of phone and video call support. Nearly half of those using mental health services found this change acceptable or even preferred it. However, acceptability was influenced by several factors, and participants were more likely to report that they had received all the support they needed, when seen in person.
Discussion
Although most participants were satisfied with the mental health support they had received, a minority were not. This, couple with findings on future need for mental health support has implications for post pandemic demand on services. Remote care has brought benefits but also risks that it could increase inequalities in access to services.
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SciScore for 10.1101/2021.05.24.21257694: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Ethics IRB: The authors assert that all procedures contributing to this work comply with the ethical standards of the relevant national and institutional committees on human experimentation and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2008.
Consent: Written or verbal informed consent was obtained from all subjects/patients.Sex as a biological variable not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Table 2: Resources
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources Analyses were undertaken using SPSS v.26. SPSSsuggested: (SPSS, RRID:SCR_002865)Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your data.
Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about …SciScore for 10.1101/2021.05.24.21257694: (What is this?)
Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.
Table 1: Rigor
Ethics IRB: The authors assert that all procedures contributing to this work comply with the ethical standards of the relevant national and institutional committees on human experimentation and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2008.
Consent: Written or verbal informed consent was obtained from all subjects/patients.Sex as a biological variable not detected. Randomization not detected. Blinding not detected. Power Analysis not detected. Table 2: Resources
Software and Algorithms Sentences Resources Analyses were undertaken using SPSS v.26. SPSSsuggested: (SPSS, RRID:SCR_002865)Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your data.
Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.
Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.
Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.
Results from rtransparent:- Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
- No protocol registration statement was detected.
Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.
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