As we start to receive mental health postings from around the country we can look at areas that are of particular concern to service users and carers. Although for some, crisis services have been really useful and effective, for others there have been real problems getting access at the point of need. Check out these postings below, and have a look at what is on the Patient Opinion site and if you are able, contribute some feedback of your own.

• Crisis team access
• Lack of support from mental health services
• Eternally grateful to excellent crisis team

Now that we are rolling out PO for mental health it is great to see more and more people from round the country contributing postings including carers. Here is one perceptive and powerful recent posting which makes a constructive point about how things could be improved and another that takes more of an overview.

http://www.patientopinion.org.uk/opinion.aspx?opinionID=19043

http://www.patientopinion.org.uk/opinion.aspx?opinionID=8806

Just to say how pleased we are here at Patient Opinion that we have signed contracts with Capita to roll out Patient Opinion as the national website for all mental health service users, carers and patients to feedback their experiences of treatment and care.  Postings coming to Patient Opinion will be reposted onto NHS Choices and vice versa.  We will be holding regional events round the country for all mental health trusts and other stakeholders, to join the on line dialogues about how we can all improve services.  The Department of Health is expecting that ““in meeting their Next Steps obligations to consult with the public Trusts can use a range of data including feedback from sites like Patient Opinion”.  There is a real acknowledgement that this type of service user and carer feedback is key to driving up quality.

Now that we include mental health services on Patient Opinion, it is interesting to have a look at what postings are coming in and how they might be grouped together.

Let's start off with a look at feedback about psychiatrists.

Here are two postings from individuals who felt listened to:

Thank you to staff at Boston House

Treated very well and received great help at Hollins Park Hospital

and (in the interests of balance) two postings from individuals who didn’t:

Attempting to gain treatment for Mental Illness

New appointment and support needed

Interesting that for service users in these postings (and others you'll see on Patient Opinion), the focus has been on the quality of the listening and the attentiveness of the consultant.