[Lack of communications between general medicine and the mental health sector]

Abstract

Mental health problems today account for a rising number of visits to general practitioners, which require collaboration between general practitioners and psychiatrists. A KAP study (Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice) was carried out among general practitioners of three towns in the "Meurthe et Moselle" region, in the common territory shared by both a child and an adult psychiatric sector. Twenty-three doctors participated in the study. General practitioners know the different psychiatric structures but they do not know their areas of speciality or how they are organised. All recognise the high frequency of mental health problems among their patients, the most frequent being depressive pathologies. They have a negative image of the sector which is perceived as a complex "world" from which they feel excluded as soon as they refer a patient because of the difficulty they have in communicating with psychiatrists.