ArticleBMC health services research2018
The gravitational force of mental health services: distance decay effects in a rural Swiss service area.
Article in BMC health services research, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 12 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
12 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Measuring Mental Health Service Accessibility for Indigenous Populations: a Systematic Review.Journal of racial and ethnic health disparities · 2025Pooled it
- Examination of Geospatial Characteristics Surrounding Retail Health Clinics: National Estimates From the Linked Retail Health Clinic (LiRHC) Database.Medical care · 2026Article
- Socio-spatial inequalities in accessibility of Indigenous community-controlled mental health services in South East Queensland, Australia.International journal of health geographics · 2025Article
- Geospatial investigations in Colombia reveal variations in the distribution of mood and psychotic disorders.Communications medicine · 2024Article
- Mental health service areas in Switzerland.International journal of methods in psychiatric research · 2023Article
- Equal access to outreach mental health care? Exploring how the place of residence influences the use of intensive home treatment in a rural catchment area in Germany.BMC psychiatry · 2022Article
- Association of travel time with mental health service use in primary health care according to contact type - a register-based study in Kainuu, Finland.BMC health services research · 2022Article
- Internalizing-Externalizing Comorbidity and Impaired Functioning in Children.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Article
- Article
- Psychiatric readmission rates in a multi-level mental health care system - a descriptive population cohort study.BMC health services research · 2021Article
- Evaluating the Connection Between Rural Travel Time and Health: A Cross-Sectional Analysis of Older Adults Living in the Northeast United States.Journal of primary care & community healthArticle
- Length of Stay of Psychiatric Admissions in a Tertiary Care Hospital.JNMA; journal of the Nepal Medical AssociationArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundPrevious research suggested a distance decay effect in health services systems, with people living closer to service facilities being more likely to use them.
methodIn this ecological cross sectional study, we conducted spatial and statistical analyses in a Swiss mental health services system being legally bound to provide primary mental health care to approximately 620,000 inhabitants. We examined a cohort of all patients who were over 18 years old and who were treated in the mental health services system between January and December 2011.
resultsThere were 5574 treatment cases during the 12-month period, 2161 inpatient cases and 3413 outpatient cases. Travel time by public transportation between patients' residence and the closest mental health service facility negatively predicted the utilization of outpatient services for all mental disorders, even after controlling for variability in ecological (e.g. socioeconomic) characteristics of the communities in the service provision area. For utilization of inpatient wards no geographical distance decay effect was observed, except for organic mental disorders.
conclusionsBased on these findings, outpatient clinics should be most effectively located decentralized and in the largest communities to meet the needs of the population as close as possible to where people live and to avoid remote areas being insufficiently supplied with mental health care. For mental hospitals and inpatient services decentralized location seems to be less important.
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