Primary Care Mental Health - Hardcover

Primary care is usually the first port of call for people with mental health problems and plays an increasingly important role in developing and delivering mental health services. Indeed, 90% of all patients with mental health problems (including 30-50% of all those with serious mental illness) only use primary care services. How can practitioners in primary care best respond to psychiatric presentations? In this book, internationally respected authors provide a conceptual background and dispense practical advice for the clinician. They discuss ways of improving joint working between primary and secondary care, as well as issues affecting the professional development of all practitioners within primary care teams. The book will be useful for general practitioners (GPs) and all medical practitioners and managers in primary care.

About the editors: Linda Gask provides consultant input to a primary care mental health service. Her teaching, research and clinical interests lie in improving the quality of care for common mental health problems. Helen Lester has a particular interest in the physical and mental healthcare of people with serious mental illness, the concept of recovery in primary care, and service-user involvement. Tony Kendrick has published extensively on the primary care of depression, schizophrenia and eating disorders. His work has been influential in the development of good practice guidelines and quality indicators in the UK for the management of severe mental illness and depression. Robert Peveler conducts research on medically unexplained physical symptoms, depression in primary care, self-care in chronic disease, and eating disorders. His clinical work is focused on general hospital liaison psychiatry, especially fatigue and pain.