Collaborative working between primary and secondary care in community mental health - Essay Example

The National Service Framework acknowledges the growing mental health needs of the adult population in the community and the alarming rise of mental health problems in the population. The commonest problems have been recognised to be anxiety and depression; however, psychotic illnesses such as schizophrenia and manic depression are also not uncommon. Although there had been a service provision for these individuals for specialist mental health care units, unfortunately that did not serve well, and most these patients would be cared by the general practitioner or the primary care team, since most of these patients prefer care by the primary care team.

If a specialist care team provides support to these patients while the care continued to be provided by the GPs and the primary team, it was contemplated, given the proportions of referrals to the specialist services, that an integrated care provision involving collaboration between care teams would best serve the purpose. However, it was soon evident that the problem of mental health care was not just specialist or primary treatment alone. It has social service implications since during the psychiatric or medical care, these patients needed support in terms of housing, employment, and training.

There were problems with medication compliance, immediate crisis management facilities, continuous follow-up and earliest interventions, social support, and dual diagnosis. These problems would need the involvement of specialist community team including social care, but they cannot function effectively without the help from the primary care teams. While this paints the ideal picture, the reality must be different, since reviews still indicate that there are gaps in care provision in the mental health sector.

Therefore, only evidence from literature can indicate the areas of the gaps, their reasons, and ways to avoid them so this framework can work most