Information Sources
Community mental health care includes all specialised public psychiatric services, except those services for admitted patients. It covers a range of services, including specialised community-based residential and non-residential psychiatric services that provide specialised treatment, rehabilitation or care for people affected by a mental illness or a psychiatric disability.
Data on community mental health care is structured into two categories, establishment-level and client-level. Establishment-level data pertains to workforce, expenditure and activity characteristics of the service.
The client-level data includes the client demographics, mental health diagnosis and service contact data.
Establishment-level information
Nationwide information about the characteristics of community-based establishments providing specialised mental health care are collated in the National Minimum Data Set (NMDS) for Mental Health Establishments. This NMDS includes expenditure, workforce and activity data from admitted patient, ambulatory and residential mental health care services. These data have been collected since 1 July 2005, replacing the Community Mental Health Establishments NMDS and the National Survey of Mental Health Services . The latest establishment-level data for mental health care were published in Mental Health Services in Australia 2007-08 and also by the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing in the annual series of National Mental Health Reports.
Client-level information
The only national collection of client-level data for community mental health care is the National Minimum Data Set (NMDS) for Community Mental Health Care. These data have been collected since 1 July 2000 . The first data for this data set were published in Mental Health Services in Australia 2000-01 and the latest client-level data for community mental health care were published in Mental Health Services in Australia 2007-08.