Community mental health centers (CMHC) are established for providing services to individuals with serious mental illness. In these centers, individual's need of treatment and care are expected to be met with a mental illness in the community as possible. The process of community mental health service creation in Turkey is relatively new and gaining popularity in last 7–8 years. First CMHC was established in 2008. After this date CMHCs’ have been opened and the target of 2016 is reaching across 236 CMHC in Turkey.

In this context, this study aims to provide views of psychiatrists, nurses, social workers, psychologists and occupational therapists who work in CMHC for the services that provided to individuals in these CMHC's and learn how to define their professional roles and responsibilities in CMHC.

This paper used qualitative research design. Data was collected from 7 CMHC in Ankara through in-depth interviews with a total of 30 people consisting of psychiatrists, nurses, social workers, psychologists and occupational therapists.

The participants look positively about given services, however, financial pressure in the creation process of services, problems in employee personal rights and lack of policies and services related to mental health forced employee and reduce the quality of services provided.

Through understanding perspectives of the professional staff toward community-based services will help to determine current problems in CMHC for policy makers.

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.