Analysis of the Importance and Performance of Mental Health Programs in the Primary Health Care System in Iran

The objective of this study was to gain a deep understanding of the importance (expected services) and performance (services provided) of mental health services to determine the priority indicators of mental health to help design higher quality and more effective community mental health interventions.

This was a mixed-method study including all the mental health executives and practitioners (n=998) in Iran. In the quantitative part, the Importance-Performance Analysis (IPA) model was used to determine the importance and performance of the current mental health programs in the primary health care (PHC) system, and in the qualitative part complementary explanations were analyzed using the thematic analysis method.

The findings show that there were gaps between the expected services and the services provided in the mental health program. Thus, the following points should be taken into account to be able to improve the mental health services: 1. Strengthening the domestic violence prevention program as regards spouse misbehavior and misbehavior towards children; 2. Continuation of lifestyle skills and parenting programs, 3. Self-care in mental health and drug use programs; 4. psychiatric disorders diagnosis and care and a healthy adolescents program is desirable and necessary, but revising and modifying the suicide prevention program (as regards costs and treatment) are essential. 5. In addition, the psycho-social intervention programs in disasters, addiction harm reduction program, strengthening family foundation and the Competent Family Program are of low importance in formulating a strategy.

Corrective actions based on the prioritizations determined can be included in the working agenda of the managers of mental health care systems at the primary levels to improve the quality of mental health services.