Community care

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

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Nationwide information about the characteristics of community-based establishments providing specialised mental health care are collated in two data collections.

The National Minimum Data Set (NMDS) for Community Mental Health Establishments includes expenditure, workforce and activity data from ambulatory and residential community mental health care services. These data have been collected since 1 July 1998. The latest establishment-level data for community mental health care were published in Mental Health Services in Australia 2005-06.

The National Survey of Mental Health Service (NSMHS) is conducted to monitor the progress of the National Mental Health Strategy and includes data on expenditure, workforce and activity by specialised mental health care services. Summary data from the NSMHS are published by the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing [External link] in the annual series of National Mental Health Reports.

Client-level information

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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 was published in the Mental Health Services in Australia 2000-01.