Development of a European Measure of Best Practice for People with Long Term Mental Illness in Institutional Care (DEMoBinc)

Abstract

This presentation will give an overview of the aims and progress of the DEMoBinc study. The project aims to develop a toolkit for assessing the living conditions, care and human rights of people with long term mental illness in psychiatric and social care institutions in European countries. The study has been funded for 36 months by the European Commission and started in March 2007. It involves eleven centres across ten countries: UK; Germany; Spain; Czech Republic; Bulgaria; Italy; Netherlands; Poland; Greece; Portugal.

The toolkit will assess domains considered most important for service users’ recovery and is designed for use in a face to face interview with the institution manager. The domains have been identified through an international literature review and Delphi exercises in each country with mental health professionals, clients, carers and advocates and agreed by the research partners and an international panel of experts in rehabilitation and recovery. The toolkit will be refined through the course of the study to maximise:

1. a. its reliability;

2. b. its usability;

3. c. its ability

to deliver assessments that can be used within each country's established systems of change at local, regional and national level. The toolkit assessment will also be compared against clients’ quality of life, autonomy and markers of recovery to test whether it can deliver a proxy-measure of the promotion of individuals’ human rights and recovery. In addition, a health economic component will assess the institution's “value for money”.