Professional team's choices of intervention towards problems and needs of patients suffering from schizophrenia across six European countries.

OBJECTIVES: This article compares in a systematic way the team's intervention choices of professionals across seven European countries: France, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain towards problems and needs of patients with schizophrenia and relates this to the diversity of psychiatric systems.
METHODS: The clinical and social status of 433 patients was assessed by means of the Schedules for Clinical Assessment in Neuropsychiatry (SCAN) and the Needs for Care Assessment instrument (NFCAS) which was used to determine teams' intervention choices toward the NFCAS problems.
RESULTS: There is no, or little, consensus across Europe on teams' intervention choices towards either the clinical or the social problems and needs of patients suffering from schizophrenic disorders. These comparisons outlined the cultural differences concerning the interventions that were proposed and should be taken into account when interpreting the number of needs and the need status since the need status relies heavily on the interventions proposed. The differences were not connected with the availability of resources; most of the comparisons show differences between centers as well as differences between groups of relatively similar resource countries.