Background: The assessment of patients’ needs is an essential element of psychiatric health care planning and evaluation. Not much interest has been paid to the study of psychiatric patients’ needs in Poland so far.

Aims: To assess the relation between inpatients’ and their key carers’ perception of needs in a Polish sample.

Methods: Out of 324 inpatients invited to take part in the study, 60 sets were finally included. Patients and their carers were examined by means of CANSAS to rate patients’ and carers’ perception of needs.

Results: The mean number of general needs indicated by patients themselves was 7.11 (± 2.98), and those indicated by carers equalled 9.53 (± 3.92). The more unmet needs identified by the patient, the more met and general needs of the patient identified by their carer (r = .27, p = .03; r = .38, p = .02, respectively). The more general needs perceived by the patient themself, the higher the indicator of unmet and general needs scored by their carer (r = .32, p = .01; r = .39, p = .001, respectively).

Conclusions: There is a significant association between the inpatients’ and their carers’ perception of needs. Patients’ perspective should serve as a high priority in developing treatment plans.