Ideally, quality and outcome measures should encompass the entire patient experience, from first access in primary care (prescribing indicators) to secondary care (both inpatient and community-based) to follow-up measures to recovery measures. Information from population surveys to establish prevalence of mental disorders would then form an important backdrop to improved quality and outcome measures, giving an indication of the coverage of services. Information technology (IT) tends to be underdeveloped and less widely adopted and used for clinical care support. The study found that the data sources most widely available across countries at the time were hospital administrative databases, national surveys and national registries. The absence of a Unique Patient Identifier (UPI) in many countries posed problems for constructing certain quality of care indicators, in particular those assessing continuity of care and quality of prescription or treatment in primary and community care.