Contribution of General Practitioners

Primary Care services are the major provider of Mental Health Services. This was acknowledged in the National Strategic Framework for Mental Health 1999 by the statement that 90% of mental health care contacts occur in a primary care setting. Since then there has been an increased focus on primary care delivery of patient care. This provision for mental health is poorly understood with little research or mapping of service provision.

Multiprofessional teams of general practitioners, practice nurses, and administrative staff provide primary care services with close working relationships with health visitors and district nurses. The majority of practices also have an attached counsellor (often employed directly by practice). Nurses increasingly provide first point of contact including NHS Direct and out of hour’s services.

The NHS plan provided new ways of working with additional 1000 graduate workers and 500 gateway workers. These are increasingly being configured into multi professional teams that are developing innovative ways of liaison with primary health care teams. The scope of this paper is general practitioner centric, however there needs to be recognition of the valuable contribution made by other colleagues in primary care setting. The understanding of multi-professional working in primary care needs to be improved with research and service mapping so as to meet patient needs and improve seamless care with specialist services.