An General Non-Psychiatric Private Practitioners’ Perception and Management Practices of Common Mental Disorders: An Observational Study in Metropolitan City of Tamilnadu

Abstract

Introduction

According to National Mental Health Survey, India accounts for 10.6% of mental health patients. Distribution of specialist is very meagre, hence general practioners (GPs) are overburdened. Whereas, GPs traditionally tend to focus only on physical symptoms omitting mental health problems for treating patients. Hence, we attempted to investigate the current psychiatric practice, mental health related perception and management practices among private primary care non-psychiatric practitioners in south Chennai city of Tamilnadu.

Methodology

 Total of 179 GPs were interviewed using semi structured pretested questionnaire. Study subjects were chosen using two stages, one being ‘Preparation of List of GPs’ and other was ‘Selection of study participants using simple random sampling method’.

Result

 Most of them (53%) were practising for less than 10 years. Only 61(34%) received psychiatric training during practising period. While assessing the opinion of non-psychiatric practitioners on psychiatric services available in the city, 173 (97%) of them felt that mental health problems are common, similarly 63% of them were willing to treat psychiatric patients, whereas only 2.7% of them had knowledge on ICD 10 diagnostic criteria for common mental illness. Updating knowledge regularly had significant association with management practices (p value <0.05).

Conclusion

GPs desired greater support and training to enable them to provide quality mental health care. Continuing Mental health Education to private GPs in India is the need of hour. Furthermore, researches have to be encouraged to identify the appropriate model for upskilling GPs.