Unmet needs in Primary Care of older clients with mental health concerns

Abstract

Objective: To examine the unmet needs of older clients with perceived mental health problems who attend primary healthcare services.

Design: Unmet needs were derived from (i) the health concerns and caregiver network availability provided by a General Practitioner (GPs) and from (ii) a qualitative analysis of an open question about needs completed by informal caregivers (ICs) of those clients.

Participants: The sample comprised 436 clients with mean age of 75.2 years and 110 ICs with mean age of 56.7 years.

Setting: Primary healthcare centers in the North of Portugal.

Main outcome measure: The Community Assessment of Risk Instrument-CARI (Clarnette RM, Ryan JP, O'Herlihy E, et al. The community assessment of risk instrument: investigation of inter-rater reliability of an instrument measuring risk of adverse outcomes. J Frailty Aging 2015;4: 80-9; O'Caoimh R, Healy E, Connell EO, et al. The Community Assessment of Risk Tool (CART): investigation of inter-rater reliability for a new instrument measuring risk of adverse outcomes in community dwelling older adults. Irish J Med Sci 2012.) and qualitative data about needs.

Results: Several needs were observed in relation to (1) mental state (e.g. cognition, anxiety/depression); (2) functionality (e.g. IADLS, bathing, mobility); (3) medical state (e.g. chronic diseases, vision deficits) and (4) IC ability to meet clients' needs. From the categorical analysis of the ICs' answers, an amount of unmet needs not only health related but also related with referrals and legal issues were found.

Conclusions: This study shows a large number of unmet needs of older people. The evaluation of the clients combined with the evaluation of the testimonials of ICs enables the understanding of difficulties of both clients and caregivers, and which needs should be prioritized.

Keywords: elderly; informal carers; mortality); needs assessment; patient outcomes (health status; quality of life.