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.

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.

The purpose of this book is to provide a children’s mental health resource tailored to the needs of physicians working with children. There are currently no such texts, despite the fact that there are patient care, healthcare systems, and workforce factors that indicate a strong need for such a resource. Approximately 1 in 5 children are diagnosed with a mental illness by the age of 18. Additionally, mental health conditions, including Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, are consistently among the most common chronic conditions in pediatric clinical populations. Delays in both diagnosis and treatment increase the morbidity associated with these conditions. These delays expose the child to negative ramifications of his/her illness and can impact rates of poor academic performance, substance use disorders and criminal justice system involvement – potentially impacting long-term life trajectories. Early identification of mental illness and appropriate intervention is critical to the healthy development of youth, though physicians in primary care and pediatrics are seldom trained to detect and treat such illnesses. The importance of recognizing mental illness is reflected in practice guidelines for pediatric primary care providers as well as in how service delivery is being structured, but this does not offer in-depth clinical guidelines. Additionally, integrated care and medical home models include mental health as key components, though yet again physicians are often not trained to work with these models. While clearly indicated clinically, these requirements do not come with significant increases in reimbursement and are added to an already demanding schedule. Increasingly, providers are also expected to use evidence based screening instruments without exposure to this body of literature. Some guidance on using those instruments in context will help them to use those tools more effectively. Finally, primary care providers and even some adult psychiatrists and psychologists are operating in a healthcare system with a severe, nationwide shortage of child and adolescent psychiatrists and mental healthcare providers. While a text certainly cannot single-handedly compensate for such a workforce shortage, it could potentially help to mitigate the negative impact on patients by facilitating early identification and treatment in the primary care setting. Additionally, with more effective treatment in pediatric settings, less complex cases may be addressed before specialty care is needed, and the expertise of child and adolescent psychiatrists can be more effectively used for more complex cases. Pediatric Psychiatry in Primary Care is the ultimate resource for clinicians working with children, including pediatricians, family physicians, general psychiatrists, psychologists, early career child psychiatrists, social workers, nurses, school counselors, and all clinical professionals who may encounter children struggling with psychiatric disorders.

"This indispensable resource provides vital guidance for integrating mental health care into your primary care practice. Learn from leading experts the latest information on enhancements to the medical home and on the care of children and adolescents with mental health symptoms that do not rise to the threshold for a diagnosis, as well as those that do"--Publisher's description.

Mental health.

Integrated primary care, now instituted in many areas of the country, is both the service that integrates medical and mental health primary care and the practice of defining the problem brought by a patient without using "medical" or "mental" as inevitable distinctions. This volume makes the case for this approach, shows how to implement it, and describes some successful programs. It will be attractive to medical managers, plan administrators, physicians, and mental health providers.

The goals of Integrated Care: Working at the Interface of Primary Care and Behavioral Health are to educate psychiatrists about the fundamental shift underway in health care and to prepare them to be successful and effective in the new health care arena. The passage and implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act presents an opportunity for newly insured patients and for funding models of integrated care, enabling psychiatrists to have a more significant population-level impact. The only book of its kind, the guide defines integrated care, reviews the evidence base, and addresses the three potential benefits of this model of care: improved outcomes, cost containment, and enhanced patient experience (also known as the "triple aim"). The new models of integrated care presented in this book are population-based, which is the key to improved outcomes, and they represent a change in how medicine in general and psychiatry in particular will approach health care delivery moving forward. The book's features are both high-impact and user-friendly: The book is divided into two sections, "Behavioral Health in Primary Care Settings" and "Primary Care in Behavioral Health Care Settings," with Section 1 focused on improving the detection and treatment of behavioral health conditions by integrating behavioral health services into primary care settings and Section 2 focused on improving the health status of patient populations with serious mental illness by integrating primary care into behavioral health treatment. Each chapter presents a set of "core principles of effective collaborative care," which serve as a guide for the structure and provision of care for the varying models, regardless of the setting. Contributors provide dozens of examples that highlight the impact psychiatrists can make in achieving the triple aim of improved outcomes, cost containment, and enhanced experience. Detailed case vignettes integrated throughout the book bring concepts to life and help clinicians to understand and improve the patient-provider relationship. The information presented in these chapters allows both practicing psychiatrists and those in training to develop a skill set essential to designing, working in, teaching, or promoting an integrated care program within a health care system. Evidence based and timely, Integrated Care: Working at the Interface of Primary Care and Behavioral Health is a must read for clinicians in the brave new world of health care reform.