Perceived need for mental health care, findings from the Australian National Survey of Mental Health and Well-being

Background. The Australian National Survey of Mental Health and Well-being was designed to detect and describe psychiatric morbidity, associated disab ility, service use and perceived need for care. The survey employed a singl e-phase interview methodology, delivering a field questionnaire to a cluste red probability sample of 10641 Australians. Perceived need was sampled wit h an instrument designed for this survey, the Perceived Need for Care Quest ionnaire (PNCQ). This questionnaire gathers information about five categori es of perceived need, assigning each to one of four levels of perceived nee d. Reliability and validity studies showed satisfactory performance of the instrument. Methods. Perceived need for mental health care in the Australian population has been analysed using PNCQ data, relating this to diagnostic and service utilization data from the above survey. Results. The survey findings indicate that an estimated 13.8 % of the Austr alian population have perceived need for mental health care. Those who met interview criteria for a psychiatric diagnosis and also expressed perceived need make up 9.9 % of the population. An estimated 11.0% of the population are cases of untreated prevalence, a minority (3.6% of the population) of whom expressed perceived need for mental health care. Among persons using s ervices, those without a psychiatric diagnosis based on interview criteria (4.4% of the population), showed high levels of perceived met need. Conclusions. The overall rate of perceived need found by this methodology l ies between those found in the USA and Canada. The findings suggest that se rvice use in the absence of diagnosis elicited by survey questionnaires may often represent successful intervention. In the survey, untreated prevalen ce was commonly not accompanied by perceived need for mental health care.