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Service utilization research: goals and prospects

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2014

Sjoerd Sytema
Sjoerd Sytema*
Affiliation:
Department of Social Psychiatry, University of Groningen, PO Box 30.001, 9700 RB Groningen, The Netherlands
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Extract

Service utilization research is not a homogenous field of research. One might distinguish between the evaluation of treatments and the evaluation of mental health systems. I will restrict myself to the mental health system approach. The first statement that has to be made is that the study of service utilization is not an aim in itself. The ultimate goal is to learn how systems of mental health care function or dysfunction. This knowledge should be helpful for planners to plan services at a more scientific basis.

Another introductory statement is that the objective of system service utilization research is the study of the relationships of a described population with the mental health system available for this population. Otherwise stated, this is an epidemiological approach of service utilization research. In this we will further distinguish between the pathway to care and the pathway through care or patterns of care. The basic questions in the pathway to care are related to the proportion of the population using mental health services; the treated prevalence and incidence. A topic is for example the inequality in service use in different social-economic-status or socio-demographic subgroups. The basic questions in the pathway through care are related to the way in which patients use the mental health system in terms of duration, intensity, setting and relapse for example. In the present paper we will focus on the latter topic mainly.

Type
Section B: From Service Description to Service Evaluation
Information
Epidemiologia e psichiatria sociale. Monograph Supplement , Volume 6 , Issue S1: Monograph Supplement 1: Making Rational Mental Health Services , April 1997 , pp. 127 - 136
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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