Rural psychiatric services.

Abstract

The objective was to describe and evaluate a community mental health service developed during 1991-1992 in an attempt to meet the mental illness needs of an isolated rural community. The setting was the Grampians health region in Western Victoria: this region has an area of 45,000 square kilometers and a population of 182,000. The method involved firstly describing the evolution of the service delivery model. This comprised a team of travelling psychiatrists and community psychiatric nurses which succeeded in providing a combined inpatient and outpatient service which was integrated with general practitioners. Secondly, diagnostic and case load descriptions of patients receiving service were compared for both the inpatient and outpatient settings. The results were that reduced reliance on inpatient beds and increased consumer satisfaction were achieved. It was concluded that on initial evaluation of the service it was seen to be meeting its objective of treating the seriously mentally ill in an isolated rural community-based setting.