The majority of patients with emotional or psychiatric disorders are treated in the primary care setting without psychiatric input. Psychiatrists need to find ways of helping family physicians manage these patients without necessarily taking over their care. One way of achieving this is for a psychiatric consultant to visit the family physician's office on a regular basis to discuss the physician's problem cases. This paper describes such a pilot project, outlines the kinds of problems family physicians discussed and recommendations that were made, and discusses the benefits of this collaborative approach.
The house call is a valuable but underused component of community psychiatric care. A review of home visits conducted by the staff of a community mental health service over a 12 month period identified four situations in which a home visit is useful: getting reluctant patients to enter therapy, conducting a comprehensive assessment, strengthening a support network, and maintaining patients in the community when their condition has deteriorated. Making psychiatric house calls requires some additional skills on the part of therapists and offers residents valuable training experience.
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