Mental health issues make up a big part of the workload for primary care physicians. In Ontario, about 20% of patient visits to primary care practitioners are related to mental health, and in many more visits, mental health issues underlie physical symptoms.
But most frontline health care workers often don’t get much training in mental health, says Dr. Peter Selby, director of medical education at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto. “We know that most people with mental health problems are seen in primary care. How do we make sure that doctors have access to this information that may have been missed during med school?” Read more in CMAJ.