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Writing letters to patients

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Phil Thomas
Phil Thomas*
Affiliation:
Department of Social and Economic Studies, University of Bradford, Richmond Building, Richmond Street, Bradford BD7 1DP
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Abstract

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Recent changes in the law and mental health policy have forced psychiatrists and other mental health professionals to review the traditional cloak of secrecy that surrounds record keeping and letter writing. This paper establishes what proportion of patients attending a psychiatric out-patient clinic are interested in receiving letters from their psychiatrist. Those who are interested tend to be better educated, whereas those who are not interested are much more likely to have an ICD–10 diagnosis of schizophrenia. Overall, there appear to be high levels of satisfaction with the nature of the letters received. The significance of these findings is discussed in relation to the difficulty of engaging people with the most severe and enduring forms of mental health problems as active participants in the process of care.

Information

Type
Original Papers
Information
Psychiatric Bulletin , Volume 22 , Issue 9 , September 1998 , pp. 542 - 545
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC-BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © 1998 The Royal College of Psychiatrists

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