Companion to Primary Care Mental Health

Book excerpt: Companion to Primary Care Mental Health is the result of a major collaboration of an international group of general practitioners, psychiatrists, policy-makers, mental health professionals and mental health advocates. This extraordinary guide provides the best available evidence for the management of patients with mental health conditions in primary care. It draws on the wisdom of a range of experts from primary and secondary care, who have translated information from the literature and their own clinical experience to apply it across the globe to everyday family practice. With the emphasis on practical application it presents family doctors and their teams with the evidence-based knowledge necessary to support the development of fully integrated systems to promote good mental health using tables and figures to illustrate complex matters. This includes the need to harness the wider determinants of health and mental health and to tackle stigma through advocacy, spirituality and ethical practice. The role of public health and the management of the many interfaces associated with providing good mental health are also covered. It includes tools for assessment, including classification and risk assessment, and the general principles required to enable a biopsychosocial approach to care. The book also considers the individual mental health conditions that family doctors and their teams are likely to encounter. As comorbidity and the management of complexity are very common in primary care mental health, these are also explored in the final chapters of the book.