Outcomes from Italian community psychiatric services studies.

Outcome measurement, to be valid, reliable, and useful to both program planningand evaluation of interventions, should be based on the principle ofmultiaxiality (i.e., considering the perspectives of all those involved in thecare process, including clinicians, patients, caregivers, users' representatives,third-party payers) and of multidimensionality (i.e., considering anintervention's effect on various dimensions of patients' life, including clinicaloutcomes such as psychopathology, disability, and needs for care andself-perceived outcomes such as quality of life and service satisfaction).Unfortunately, in Italy, this methodology has not been applied on a large scale. However, some Italian centers with a long-lasting tradition in the area ofpsychiatric epidemiology have provided evidence that outcome assessment inroutine practice is not only sustainable but also advantageous in the medium- andlong-term. This article summarizes the results obtained in some of these studies,including three longitudinal studies on the outcome of community psychiatric carepromoted by the research group of South Verona, such as the South Verona Outcome Project, the Psychosis Incident Cohort Outcome Study, and the GeneticsEndophenotypes and Treatment: Understanding early Psychosis - • Psychosis:early Intervention and Assessment of Needs and Outcome trial.Implementation ofroutine outcome assessment can lead-and to a certain extent has already led-to a cultural change among Italian mental health service staff members, to facilitate a) the establishment of a revision-of-practice process, b) greater acceptance of the importance of evidence, and a predisposition to put it into practice.