Patterns of service provision in older people’s mental health care in australia

Hossein Tabatabaei-Jafari, Jose A. Salinas-Perez*, Mary Anne Furst, Nasser Bagheri, John Mendoza, David Burke, Peter McGeorge, Luis Salvador-Carulla

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    10 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Australia has a population of around 4 million people aged 65 years and over, many of whom are at risk of developing cognitive decline, mental illness, and/or psychological problems associated with physical illnesses. The aim of this study was to describe the pattern of specialised mental healthcare provision (availability, placement capacity, balance of care and diversity) for this age group in urban and rural health districts in Australia. The Description and Evaluation of Services and DirectoriEs for Long Term Care (DESDE-LTC) tool was used in nine urban and two rural health districts of the thirty-one Primary Health Networks across Australia. For the most part service provision was limited to hospital and outpatient care across all study areas. The latter was mainly restricted to health-related outpatient care, and there was a relative lack of social outpatient care. While both acute and non-acute hospital care were available in urban areas, in rural areas hospital care was limited to acute care. Limited access to comprehensive mental health care, and the uniformity in provision across areas in spite of differences in demographic, socioeconomic and health characteristics raises issues of equity in regard to psychogeriatric care in this country. Comparing patterns of mental health service provision across the age span using the same classification method allows for a better understanding of care provision and gap analysis for evidence-informed policy.

    Original languageEnglish
    Article number8516
    Pages (from-to)1-18
    Number of pages18
    JournalInternational Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
    Volume17
    Issue number22
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2 Nov 2020

    Fingerprint

    Dive into the research topics of 'Patterns of service provision in older people’s mental health care in australia'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

    Cite this