Consumer evaluation of a community mental health service, II: Perceptions of clinical care.

Using patient self-report and therapist questionnaires, the authors investigated the perceptions of patients at a community mental health service about several aspects of their clinical care: what they expected from treatment, what they found helpful about treatment, how they thought treatment could be improved, their therapist preferences, and their perceptions of their treatment outcome. The patients' desire for advice and the perceived helpfulness of the advice given in therapy, the patients' limited preference for a therapist of their own ethnicity, and other findings are discussed, as is the usefulness of such consumer evaluations in mental health care delivery.