Respects of human rights and perception of quality of care, the users’ point of view comparing mental health and other health facilities in a region of Italy

Abstract

This work is part of a research project that aims to measure organisational well-being, human rights respect and quality of care in mental health services in Sardinia, Italy, country that has replaced long-stay psychiatric hospitals with community mental health services. Previous contributions have seen Italian health professionals and users as the most satisfied and optimistic about the quality of the mental health care provided and the respect they offer for service users’ rights. Our aim is to confirm these findings by comparing experiences of users of mental health services with those of other care services in the same region. Our findings indicate that mental health services users show higher level of satisfaction for care and higher perception of users’ human rights respect compared to non-mental health facilities users. They also have greater satisfaction with organisational aspects of services and they are more convinced that the health professionals rights are respected. In contrast, they are less satisfied with the resources available for care centres than other users and require more professional psychosocial support. We want to allow future comparisons to other regions on quality assessment through the perception of users and worker on respect for standards and human rights.