Investment in quality registers within mental health care

The first national medical quality register was established in Norway in 2009 and since then, the number of quality registers has grown significantly.

The main purpose of collecting data in such registers is to ensure that you, regardless of where you live or who you are, receive the same treatment as others. Additionally, the registers are intended to contribute to improved quality of care and serve as a basis for research.

However, in 2021, the National Audit Office pointed out that Norway lacked registers for mental disorders. In 12 years, only one register for mental disorders had been established. This was the Norwegian quality register for the treatment of eating disorders, which was granted national status in 2015. Furthermore, a quality register for substance abuse treatment received national status three years later: the National Quality Register for the Treatment of Harmful Use or Dependence on Substances (KVARUS).

Three New Registers in 2022

However, work to increase the number of registers in mental health care was already underway. In 2020, an interregional working group for medical quality registers discussed a plan for the development of quality registers in mental health care and substance abuse treatment. The goal was to establish four new registers, covering the entire age range from children to the elderly in terms of mental health.

Many years of effort from professionals across the country have borne fruit. In 2022, three new registers in mental health care were approved:

• National Quality Register for Geriatric Psychiatry (KVALAP)
• National Quality Register for Electroconvulsive Therapy
• National Quality Register for Treatment in Adult Mental Health Care (PHV)

Separate Register for Children and Adolescents

The sixth medical quality register in mental health and substance abuse recently received national approval and is focused on child and adolescent psychiatry (BUP). The register is called the Quality Register for Child and Adolescent Mental Health Care (KVABUP) and is managed by the University Hospital of North Norway (UNN), Health North.

The data collected in the register can be used to analyse operations and treatment outcomes, and the knowledge gained should benefit professionals, patients, and their relatives. For example, it can provide answers to whether health care reaches the right patient groups, whether patients and relatives are satisfied with the help they receive, and whether the treatment has the expected effect.

You can read more about the new register here.

Creating a Foundation for Prevention

The national leader of Mental Health, Ole-Marius Minde Johnsen, is pleased with the increased focus on quality registers in mental health.

— Mental Health is pleased that three new registers have been established in 2022, which shows that the criticism from the National Audit Office has been taken seriously. Quality registers in mental health and substance abuse will enable Mental Health and other user and relative organisations to monitor and develop the quality of treatment. We see that such registers are important elements in research work, and we have experienced that the Norwegian Directorate of Health uses the registers to extract data for selection work, says Johnsen.

Mental Health believes that the new quality register in child and adolescent psychiatry is not a day too late.

— We see in the post-pandemic period that the increase in mental health issues among children and adolescents creates a need to strengthen specialist health services with expanded and new treatment options. It must also be ensured that there is coordination with the quality registers for adults, so that research can easily examine the same parameters over time, from birth to old age. This will be particularly important for documenting what may be preventive for mental health issues, says Johnsen.

— If much of the research in mental health in Norway is to come from quality registers, it will be important that the data collected allows for a view of individuals from multiple perspectives rather than just a professional angle. By this, we mean that much of what makes us human is not included, and the research will reflect this.