The review of screening's index in programme of mental health integration in health networks of Esfahan and compared with country index

The purpose of the national mental health program was to provide minimum psychological services to all Iranian people by the year 2000. In 1988 the integrated mental health program in primary health care was conducted in Shahrekord and Shahreza. The aim of this project was to evaluate the effectiveness of integrating mental health program in health system. Because of the positive results of the study, mental health program was declared as the ninth element of PHC in 1990 and was gradually spread across the country. The aim of this study is to assess the patient finding indicators between 2001 and 2006 and compare them with the national expected limit.
This study was a longitudinal cross-sectional study. Sampling method was census and the sample size included the information of all patients who were under the mental health program during the years 2001 to 2006. This information was collected through evaluating standard form documentations for information of the mental health patients (No.102). At the end of each year, that year's information of mental health patients was categorized and, then, the results were analyzed by SPSS software. In this study, the patients were identified (severe and mild psychological disorders, epilepsy, mental retardation and other cases) and then compared with the national expected limit. Less than 0.05 P-value was considered as significant level.
Findings: Patient-finding indicators for severe mental disorder increased from 1.248to 2.46 per thousand, mild disorders from 9.96 to 17.5, epilepsy cases from 3.15 to 5.26, mental retardation from 3.82 to 5.86, and other psychological disorders from 2.79 to 4.28 between the years 2001 and 2006 which is more than the national expected limit.
The results of this study showed that the case finding of mild mental patients is higher than both the national expected limit and severe mental illness, epilepsy, mental retardation or other mental disorders, which requires more training of health workers, increasing the awareness of people about the symptoms of mental disorders and on time refers to medical centers.