GP journal focuses on mental health

Australian Family Physician, the flagship journal of The Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP), features a range of clinical, viewpoint and research articles focusing on key issues in general practice today. The June 2011 edition focuses on mental illness and includes the following feature articles:

Antidepressant use

Christopher Harrison, Helena Britt, Janice Charles
The recent 2009–2010 National Prescribing Service (NPS) Evaluation Report used Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS) prescribing data to examine antidepressant prescribing. The report stated that general practitioner antidepressant prescribing in 2007–2009 was lower than expected due to NPS interventions.

Mental health risk assessment – a guide for GPs

Sivasankaran Balaratnasingam

Risk assessment of patients in general practice is a challenging area of clinical practice. Competing interests of managing patient wishes, consideration of duty to warn others and invoking the Mental Health Act while practising in a medicolegally accountable manner can be difficult.

Anxiety disorders – assessment and management in general practice

Michael Kyrios, Richard Mouding, Maja Nedeljkovic

Anxiety is a normal physiological response to a threat. Anxiety disorders occur when this normal physiological response is associated with high levels of autonomic arousal, erroneous cognitions and dysfunctional coping strategies.

Managing borderline personality disorder and substance use – an integrated approach

Dan I Lubman, Kate Hall, Amy Pennay, Sathya Rao

Although substance use is a common feature of borderline personality disorder, regular use is associated with greater levels of psychosocial impairment, psychopathology, self harm and suicidal behaviour and leads to poorer treatment outcomes.

Anxiety and depression – online resources and management tools

Julia Reynolds, Kathleen Griffiths, Helen Christensen

There are significant unmet needs for psychological interventions for anxiety and depression in the population. e-health resources complement existing services by providing high quality information, symptom prevention, management interventions and peer support.

Australian Family Physician is the journal of the RACGP. It is a peer reviewed journal, publishing original articles and reviews dedicated to meeting the ongoing educational requirements of general practitioners.

For more information, including subscription to the print version, visit www.racgp.org.au/afp.

Souce: www.racgp.org.au