Community mental health services are getting better, a survey from the health watchdog suggests. But access to counselling and support for carers is still poor, the Healthcare Commission warned. A survey of 16,000 patients highlighted a “worrying” lack of progress in helping people with mental illness access benefits or get work.

{mosimage}Mental health leaders admitted there were still problems with services but they were working to improve things. Overall, 76% felt the services they received were “good”, “very good” or “excellent”. Relationships between psychiatrists and their patients appear to be improving with steady year-on-year increases in the proportion of patients who believed they were listened to and respected.

And more people with complex mental health problems know who their care co-ordinator is and are being offered copies of their care plan. More people had a care review in the past 12 months than had been reported in the last annual survey. But in some areas there is still a lot of work to be done, the findings from 69 trusts suggested.

Half of patients still have no access to telephone-based out-of-hours crisis care. And more than one in three patients who wanted counselling say they did not get it. The figures also indicated a lack of progress in helping people with mental health problems access benefits with almost a third of those who wanted help not receiving it.

Anna Walker, Chief Executive of the Healthcare Commission, said: “The general trends are encouraging, particularly given that many trusts are still getting to grips with providing care to service users within their own communities. But this shouldn’t disguise the problems – problems that have been going on for too long.