Informing Policy Overview

Surveys primarily provide information on prevalence rates, which is a core contributor to the assessment of national needs, in preparation for the development and commissioning of services.

Surveys also flag up key risk factors, unmet need, monitor service use, and monitor changes in prevalence rates.

They provide unique opportunities to test aetiological hypotheses if they are designed with a longitudinal element. Such information is crucial to develop preventive and promotion interventions in relation to social exclusion, vulnerable groups, debt, newly defined conditions such as autism and ADHDacross the age range.

By linking the survey data with administrative databases (e.g., death records) mental heath data can be related to cause of death.

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“There is now a growing realisation of the importance of mental health for human, social, and economic capital and for the need of governments to consider their mental health policies irrespective of the way their mental health services are financed” Rachel Jenkins (2001)