Dealing with major depression in general practice

Dealing with schizophrenia in general practice

Schizophrenia is a psychiatric illness of unknown aetiology, and impairs cognition and social and occupational functioning. It is challenging in terms of the disability it causes, the unclear nature of what causes it, the complexity of diagnosis and treatment limitations. General practitioners can play a role in various phases of the illness, from early intervention to chronic care, in liaison ...

Dealing with low-incidence serious diseases in general practice.

Cost-effective health care depends on high-quality triage. The most challenging aspect of triage, which GPs confront on a regular basis, is diagnosing rare but serious disease. Failure to shoulder any risk in this situation overloads the health system and subjects patients to unnecessary investigation. Adopting too high a risk threshold leads to missed cases, late diagnosis, and sometimes avoid...

Dealing with uncertainty in general practice: an essential skill for the general practitioner.

Many patients attending general practice do not have an obvious diagnosis at presentation. Skills to deal with uncertainty are particularly important in general practice as undifferentiated and unorganised problems are a common challenge for general practitioners (GPs). This paper describes the management of uncertainty as an essential skill which should be included in educational programmes fo...

[Treatment of depression in general practice].

With the co-operation of the family doctors in five selected urban general practices the general-practitioner treatment of 73 patients suffering from a new episode of depressive illness was evaluated over a period of four months. The purpose was to test the belief that general practitioners are best fitted to manage most psychological ailments, and depression was chosen as the psychiatric illne...

Depression and suicide in general medical practice.