Mental health in the community : guest editorial

Extracted from text ... In the new 2-year internship programme newly qualified doctors must spend 4 months in family medicine, primary care and mental health. The association of mental health with family medicine and primary care is very appropriate as up to a quarter of patients attending primary care have a psychiatric condition. In the older and more traditional medical curriculum, psychiatry often meant spending time in a psychiatric hospital where mental health became equated with seeing people who were acutely psychotic or manifesting severe and frequently bizarre symptoms. Once these doctors graduated and became general practitioners (GPs) they often felt unprepared to ..