How do GPs navigate complex mental health across sectors?

It is a situation many GPs face in their practice on a daily basis – a patient presents with complex mental health needs.
 
But what are the best options for a timely and effective response and what care pathways are even available?
 
An upcoming webinar presented by the Mental Health Professionals’ Network (MHPN) aims to help GPs to better identify and manage the best way forward for such patients. 
 
It will include advice on how to help patents move between primary care, hospital and community settings, and how the associated challenges can negatively impact the provision of integrated and effective multidisciplinary care.
 
The 31 March webinar, ‘Improving Your Practice: Working Across Sectors’ will present hypothetical scenarios to an expert panel on people living with complex mental health conditions.
 
With no prior information on the scenarios, the panel members will discuss strategies they would use to overcome challenges and work together to provide integrated and effective multidisciplinary care.
 
Dr Michael Tam, a member of the RACGP Expert Committee – Quality Care, is one of the webinar’s four panellists, along with social worker Tracey Hocking, psychologist Margaret Foulds and psychiatrist Dr Paul Fung, with psychiatrist Dr Ruth Vine the panel moderator.
 
As well as working as a GP, Dr Tam works with people with severe mental illness for New South Wales Health, with a focus on integrated care.
 
Dr Tam said for patients that do not have mental health illnesses of certain categories, ‘not quite sick enough for some services, but too sick for some of the easily available community services’, it is GPs who were often left feeling like they are ‘holding the can’.
 
‘We see the whole population,’ he told newsGP.
 
‘We’re good at mental health, but we need more supports, but those supports don’t quite arrive. So, I think that’s the challenge.’
 
Dr Tam said patients are not always seeking multidisciplinary support, as they are often unaware of what they are dealing with when first seeing a GP.
 
‘When people come to see a GP, they don’t necessarily come thinking “I have an anxiety disorder”. They come because things aren’t working in their life,’ he said.
 
‘In a similar vein, people don’t necessarily come with the idea that they want to have a multidisciplinary team – they just want to be better.
 
‘So, the role for the GP, in my experience, is to tease apart what are the actual issues for the person? What are their priorities?
 
‘The initial assessment with primary care is really important, and that’s developing the shared plan for the patient.’
 
Dr Tam said while it is important for GPs to get to know their local ‘ecology’ of allied health services that are available to them, their patients are also invaluable as ‘eyes and ears’ on the ground.
 
‘You get bits of intelligence on who they’ve seen; they say, “oh, they’re really good at this, or they’re odd or a bit weird in their behaviour towards me about this”,’ he said.
 
‘You end up getting a sense from your patients on what’s available and what’s the most appropriate [choice] for certain things.

‘People with illness, they’re the experts in their own experience … for people with more severe, complex mental illness, often they spend years, most of their life, living with their experience and have interacted with a whole bunch of different health services over time.’
 
Dr Tam hopes the key takeaway for GPs in attendance will be that ‘we’re all on the same side’.
 
‘We all want our patients to get better,’ he said.

The webinar will be held on Monday, 31 March at 7pm (AEDT). Learn more and register here.
 
Log in below to join the conversation.

allied healthcare mental health multidisciplinary health webinar